


Of Elder Scrolls and Huntsmen: Dragon Rose

by Jessesanman, NaanContributor, xTRESTWHOx



Series: Of Elder Scrolls and Huntsmen [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, RWBY
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 59,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23272114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessesanman/pseuds/Jessesanman, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaanContributor/pseuds/NaanContributor, https://archiveofourown.org/users/xTRESTWHOx/pseuds/xTRESTWHOx
Summary: On their way to Patch for a surprise gift for Yang, Team RWBY get lost at sea and wash up into a new world where Grimm are non-existent and magic is commonplace. They search for a way to return to Remnant but become wrapped up in this world's fate when ancient powers come to light. As time goes on, they must adapt to the cold land of Skyrim and fight to defend it against threats both small and great.
Series: Of Elder Scrolls and Huntsmen [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1673428
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	1. Under Unbroken Moons

With the help of xTRESTWHOx and NaanContributor I've begun the process of rewriting Chapters 1 and 2. However, thanks to how my style has developed over time, these chapters will be...longer. We've already determined we're going to end up spreading the original two over five or six.  
  
For AO3, this is basically the beginning. Enjoy!  
  


* * *

  
**Chapter 1: Under Unbroken Moons**

* * *

  
  
_August 7th_  
  


* * *

* * *

  
Feeling the ocean breeze grace her cheek and the sun's rays cast down from overhead, Ruby nuzzled her dog, a tiny black and white corgi named Zwei for a moment before handing him over to Nora Valkyrie, who immediately squeed as he rounded on her and licked her cheek.  
  
“Make sure he gets his walks, or he’s going to destroy something,” Ruby reminded her. From the corner of her eye, she saw her teammate Blake Belladonna adopt a blank expression before shuddering, likely in remembrance of the last time that happened.  
  
"So many books... Lost forever..." Blake muttered under her breath. Ruby's partner, Weiss Schnee, outwardly rolled her eyes at how overdramatic the Faunus was acting over two old books with chewed spines while Blake's partner and Ruby's sister, Yang Xiao Long, patted her back comfortingly. Nora, seemingly oblivious to Blake's distress, held Zwei under her arm while using the other to salute.  
  
“Don’t worry! Me and this little fluffy boy are gonna head out every day. Aren’t we, fluffy boy?” she directed to the corgi in question. He yipped in response and licked her again, causing Nora to laugh exuberantly. The others from Team RWBY and their sister team, Team JNPR, watched with smiles on their faces before Jaune Arc, the leader of JNPR, cleared his throat and turned his attention back towards team RWBY.  
  
“So, what are you guys getting?” Jaune asked, to which the sisters shrugged.  
  
“Don’t know,” Yang admitted. “My dad just said I had a present in the garage. You’ll know when we know.”  
  
“We’ll be back in time to celebrate at Beacon,” Ruby reassured them, “but while we’ve got this break, we’re going to show Weiss and Blake around Patch.”  
  
“I do admit to being curious about where you two grew up,” Weiss said. “I’m interested in seeing what kind of environment you were raised in to get to this point.”  
  
“Thanks… I think.”  
  
“I just want to get away from the dog,” Blake admitted, unabashedly. She glared at the corgi held in Nora’s arms, and he looked back at her with his happy, drooling face and his tongue lolled out. "Don't give me that look, you know what you did."  
  
“Ah, come on! You’ll love it on Patch!” Yang told her. “We’ve got cliffs, mountains, beaches, an old lady that walks around selling baked goods to everybody every week.”  
  
“Did you grow up on an island or in a fairytale?” Jaune asked with eyebrows raised.  
  
"Yes," Yang cheekily replied, causing Jaune to sigh and rub the back of his head. Leaning against one of the many wooden railings that lined the docks, Jaune's partner Pyrrha Nikos chuckled with her hand covering her mouth. Nora's partner Lie Ren, meanwhile, simply helped Nora tend to Zwei, a faint yet calm smile crossing his face before he turned his attention to the end of the boardwalk, where a Faunus with shark-like fins attached to his arms approached. His attire screamed sailor, complete with an anchor tattoo on his right shoulder, and it wasn't hard to spot the vessel the Faunus had come from.  
  
“You girls ready?” the sailor asked, and Ruby quickly turned her head towards him and nodded.  
  
“Just about, Ish,” she told him. “Just saying good-bye.”  
  
“Well say it and hurry up!” another with a cetacean tail attached to his back yelled from the other end of the boat. “We’re burning daylight! It’ll already be night by the time we get there!”  
  
“Don’t rush them, Mail!”  
  
“I’m the one being rushed!”  
  
“Are they all right?” Pyrrha asked in concern, looking at the two Faunus as they continued to argue.  
  
“Nah, they’re fine. They just like to argue sometimes,” Ruby assured her. As the argument appeared to increase in volume, Pyrrha wasn't quite so sure, yet she was also far too polite to say anything more about it.  
  
“They might be a little worried about the weather, but the storm’s supposed to go over Vale and go inland,” Weiss figured. “We might get some waves and rain, but we’ll miss the worst of it.”  
  
“As long as you’re all safe, that’s all that matters in the end,” Ren said. The entirety of Team RWBY nodded, then they all gave each other their good-byes. Hugs and well-wishes were exchanged, and then Team RWBY walked down the docks and onto the boarding ramp. Team JNPR waved at them as the ship sailed towards Patch Island, Team RWBY doing the same until they could no longer see each other.  
  


* * *

  
“Urgh, I don’t like this,” Weiss complained as she held her stomach. More of the storm had reached them than expected, and now it was rocking the boat in irregular patterns. “Why couldn’t we have gotten on an airship?”  
  
“Because the boat was cheaper and more direct?” Blake guessed. She knew the airbus would’ve gone to the north end of the island and then worked its way down, whereas Ruby and Yang’s home was closer to the southeast coast.  
  
“Money wouldn’t have been an issue.”  
  
“For you.”  
  
“I would have bought us all tickets to -urt- avoid this!” Weiss groaned some more and clutched her stomach tighter. "Uggh, remind me never to complain about Jaune's airsickness again."  
  
"Will do, and don't worry. You'll get used to it. Eventually," Blake said as she rubbed Weiss' back. The action, although infantile in Weiss' mind, seemed to help, and so the heiress allowed her to continue. Ruby then walked back in from abovedeck, shaking out her raincoat as she took it off and shut the cabin door.  
  
“Okay, the guys said they should be able to handle the rest of the night. Yang’s just grabbing us some grub, and then we can settle in.” She looked over to her partner and snapped her fingers in recognition. “Oh! I told them you weren’t feeling well, and Mail handed me some medicine.” She fished it out of her pocket and handed over the packet. It was over-the-counter, whatever it was, so Weiss didn’t object to taking it. As she swallowed a dose with some water, Yang came in with a few plastic leftover boxes.  
  
“Who wants red snapper and rice?”  
  
“Me me me me me,” Blake said almost frantically. Yang handed over a box and she opened it up to find it steaming.  
  
“Already heated up for ya," Yang said as drool trickled down the corner of Blake's mouth. Yang then turned her attention to the blancette. "Weiss, you okay?”  
  
“Just give me a minute," Weiss insisted. "I can already feel it working.”  
  
“Just say-” Yang paused as a sense of weightlessness overcame her. The others felt it, too, and then things seemed to float for a second. Blake quickly put the lid on her box as she was lifted in the air for a moment while everyone’s hair seemed to reach up. Then everything came back down in a crash. The sound of water splashing up reached them all as they struggled to hold themselves and several things in place.  
  
“What was that?!” Weiss cried out, a slight tinge of fear on the edge of her voice.  
  
“I think we were on a wave,” Yang calmly guessed. “We must have been pretty high to fall like that.”  
  
“Are the guys okay?” Ruby wondered, and Yang nodded.  
  
“Don’t worry, Rubes. We’ve seen Ish catch up to wave riders and jump twenty feet out of the water, and Mail’s an even better swimmer than him. Even if they went overboard, they’d be right back on deck.”  
  
“How do you know them, anyways?” Blake asked as she forked up fish and rice in big scoops.  
  
“They’ve given us rides since forever,” Yang simply said.  
  
“I go to school with their son,” Ruby added. “Buck’s pretty cool. I think he wants to become a Coast Guard or a sea-route defense specialist.”  
  
“Wait, they’re married?” Blake asked in surprise.  
  
“Oh yeah. Didn’t mention that.”  
  
“I thought we did,” Yang said while thinking back. “I know we said we were going with the Peaks.”  
  
“That could’ve been a company name, or a brother pair’s surname,” Weiss pointed out. “Also, we really didn’t pay attention to that one part.”  
  
“Wow, and you’re usually a geek for little details.” Yang shrugged.  
  
Things wound down from there, with the girls discussing one thing or another until they all felt the need to go to sleep overtake them. The boat was rocking far less than before, and the storm seemed to have lifted just before they all fell asleep.  
  


* * *

  
_Ruby was flying, high above the world and sky. Her breath came out in light whispers that spoke of healing and repair, her mouth opened to bite away corruption, and her arms and legs pushed her forward to find that which needed her attention.  
  
A mass of gold flashed before her, slowing to show itself as golden scales, some bigger than her. A crevice opened, revealing a massive eye beneath. The silver iris focused on her, and she laughed and rejoiced in words like honey and thunder._  
  
**_“You are,”_ ** _a great voice seemed to say, like the life of the world put their weight behind those words. Some part of Ruby wondered what it meant, but then she was tucked into a ball and falling towards the world, only for a great, black hole to open in front of her. She fell through, and then there was crying.  
  
“Ruby,” a sweet and familiar voice softly spoke._  
  


* * *

  
“Ruby, wake up!” The young girl yawned and stretched as she heard her sister waking her. She smacked her lips and looked around to see Weiss and Blake were just getting up themselves, but Yang was up, about, and looked worried.  
  
"Wha's goin' on?" Ruby mumbled, still half asleep.  
  
“Ish and Mail are gone!” she said, snapping Ruby away from sleepiness in an instant.  
  
“What?! Gone?!”  
  
“I checked all over the ship, even their cabin. They’re not anywhere!”  
  
Ruby shot up and immediately ran around the vessel, zooming in and out of places as a cloud of rose petals. No matter where she looked, the sailor couple were nowhere to be seen.  
  
“No,” she quietly uttered when she stopped on the deck. “Th- they couldn’t have gone overboard. They’ve gone through storms for years.”  
  
The other three walked out and looked around at the ship and surrounding sea. The waters were calm and the sky above them was clear as could be. It would have almost seemed ideal if it weren’t for the two missing persons.  
  
“They- they’re gone,” Blake said softly, scarcely believing the words coming out of her mouth. Yang was looking overboard in every direction she could, but ended up walking away and sighing.  
  
“No sign of them,” she sadly relayed to Ruby, who looked terribly deflated. “Hey, it’ll be all right. We’ll get to the coast, and let the Sea Guards know.”  
  
“We’re going to leave them?” Weiss asked in shock. Ruby wanted nothing more than to tell Weiss "no," but she forced herself to stop and think. After a moment, Ruby shook her head and focused her attention entirely on Weiss.  
  
“Yang’s right. We’re not equipped to look for missing persons on the open sea,” Ruby explained. “Besides, they’re salt water type Faunus. If anyone will be fine, it’s them.”  
  
“Salt water?”  
  
“Some aquatic Faunus are able to drink salt water,” Blake told her. “If they both are salt water types, then they can survive for days, potentially weeks on the sea.” _‘As long as they can avoid too many Grimm,’_ she refrained from adding.  
  
“Huh. I didn’t know that.”  
  
Yang made a sound of frustration, and they looked over to see she was fiddling with her scroll. “No signal! We’ll have to dock in to tell… No, I don’t know where we are. We can’t find Patch like this!”  
  
“We’ll have to head back for Vale,” Ruby decided.  
  
“Can’t we just go west?” Weiss asked.  
  
“There’s no telling how far off we are,” the leader told her. “We might miss Patch entirely and then end up in the Drakewing Sea. At least going east means we’re almost definitely going to hit Sanus. Then we-” The cry of a seagull interrupted her thoughts and the girls looked to watch one pass by. They then saw its heading and were immediately overcome with relief at the sight of land on the horizon.  
  
“Okay, new idea. Turn towards land, find our way from there.”  
  
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Yang replied as she went to check their bearing and steer them towards the dry ground. Ruby nodded, then turned her attention towards Weiss and Blake.  
  
“You guys know anything about boats?” she asked the two.  
  
“A little,” Blake admitted, though Weiss just shrugged. Accepting it for what it was, Ruby calmly walked towards the back of the ship and began to explain.  
  
“Okay, let’s keep an eye out for anything nearby. Any ships or coastal cities. Cities mean ports, which mean places we can dock. Another ship can help us steer in or find out where we are.” She went over to the wheel, where Yang was setting their course. “Okay, I think we should head up north, since there’s a lot more ports that direction.”  
  
“Uh, Ruby, I’d like to, but that land we’re seeing is directly south of us.” The younger sister blinked and then looked back at the distant shore, comparing its direction to the morning sun. Ruby was momentarily at a loss for words, and a tiny trickle of sweat began to drip down her brow as she pondered the implications of what Yang just said. None of them were good, and her entire team could pick up on that.  
  
“We couldn’t have been blown that far off, could we?” she wondered aloud. In the end, no one there could provide an answer.  
  


* * *

  
The Huntresses-in-training followed along the shoreline, soon catching sight of an old-fashioned lighthouse that led to a small city sitting over the sea on a peninsula arch. A cape was nestled up to the settlement, wooden ships docked and docking, loading and unloading cargo in its river mouth port. They slowly drove in and moored the boat, which Weiss noted was the only metal one there. Judging by the flabbergasted looks of the individuals around her, this port might not have ever seen one before. Everything about the place seemed to be rustic and old-fashioned, which wasn’t a good sign for the overall tech level of the place. The fact they still couldn’t get a CCTS signal at any point on the way wasn’t helping matters.  
  
“Hey, we need to report missing persons,” Yang said as a woman who looked to be a customs official approached.  
  
“You…lost people at sea, you’re saying?” she asked as she took a quill and dipped it into an inkpot sitting on the open ledger in her arms.  
  
“Yeah, the owners of the boat, actually,” she further explained. “Ish and Mail Peak.”  
  
While Yang explained the situation and described the two men, Weiss looked around for signs of where they were. A warehouse nearby was labeled East Empire Company, which she wasn’t familiar with. There was a sign down a path some distance away, but too far for her to read the names from. She swiveled her head around to try and get her bearings, but she was getting nowhere. Then, a man carrying a crate set his load down and she seized the opportunity to catch his attention.  
  
“Excuse me, sir, but could you tell us where we are?” she politely requested.  
  
“Ye don’ know where ya are?” he asked, an eyebrow arched up high.  
  
“We got lost,” she explained. “We were heading to Patch from Vale.”  
  
“Rrriiiiight,” he intoned slowly. “Well, yer in Solitude, cap’tal of Skyrim.”  
  
“Skyrim?” She never heard of a place by that name. Given it apparently had a capital, she figured any entity that substantial would be well-known. Her confusion slowly rose, but she forced herself not to dwell on it and nodded towards the longshoreman. “Thank you. Do you know where that is in relation to Vale?”  
  
“Dunno,” he said before heading back to work. “Ne’er hearda Vale.” Weiss looked after him in disbelief. A grown man never hearing about Vale seemed impossible, even for the most backwoods of places. Even a tiny port should’ve had direct and near-constant contact with them at this distance.  
  
"Where in the Gods' names are we?" Weiss wondered aloud, then she felt a small tug on her arm. Weiss shook herself out of her stupor and turned to face Ruby.  
  
“Hey, Weiss,” Ruby said. “Good news and bad news. Good news, they’re going to keep a lookout for the Peaks and have shore patrols search for them for a few days.”  
  
“That’s good to hear." Weiss nodded, then raised her eyebrow. "What’s the bad news?”  
  
“Ship’s not ours, so they’ll put her into dry-dock,” Yang answered as she walked up from the official. “We can get whatever we need out of it, but they’ll be holding the ship itself until either the Peaks come to claim it, or a year and a day have passed.”  
  
“A year-and-a-day law? Really? Vale and the other kingdoms got rid of those laws centuries ago, why does this place...?” Weiss sighed before pinching the bridge of her nose. “Did she at least know where Vale is?”  
  
“Uh, more bad news,” Yang answered with a nervous grin, and Weiss again sighed in exasperation.  
  
“How is this even possible? There’s no way a place like this can be that ignorant.”  
  
“Maybe they call it something else?” Ruby suggested. “Nora talked about this place that didn’t call Mistral ‘Mistral’. They called it the Jade Seat or something.”  
  
" _That_ , at least, has both historical and cultural reasoning behind it. This place has neither that I can tell."  
  
“Well, at least we’re on land. We can figure things out from here,” Blake told them while looking around. Her eyes suddenly widened, and everyone looked at what she was focused on to see a scaly being with a crocodilian tail and tooth-filled snout climb out of the water, pulling up a net as he did.  
  
“C’mon, Makum. You’re hardly going half as fast as Chakus on a bad day,” a human with dark skin called out while the crocodillian shot him a look.  
  
“Most of us have a life besides fishing,” the scaly Makum answered the man as they and a half-dozen men began pulling in the mass of fish he’d dragged in. All of Team RWBY stared silently at the creature-person with dumbfounded expressions. The being was unlike anything they had ever seen before, even on a Faunus. All of the Faunus they'd seen only had one or rarely two animal traits on their person, while this Makum looked entirely like a crocodile who decided to walk on two legs and grow hands.  
  
“Never saw a Faunus look like that before,” Yang stated, still staring at the scaled person who didn't seem to notice them.  
  
“That’s not a Faunus,” Blake said quietly. The others looked at her oddly but shrugged it off.  
  


* * *

  
“Did we _really_ need to take their food?” Weiss asked. “It feels almost like theft.”  
  
“It could go bad if we leave it, and we left a note saying we’d pay them back,” Ruby explained. “They’ll understand.”  
  
“If you say so.” The girls paused at the gates of the city, seeing the line of people walking into a crowded square just past the entrance. To their horror, a man was standing on a platform with his hands bound behind him, a pair of guards near him and a man in black garb sharpening a large axe. The block with a round indention was the last piece of the puzzle needed to tell them what was occurring.  
  
“Oh Gods,” Weiss muttered as she realized what they had walked into. The crowd was generally jeering at the man, and it sounded like there was a crying girl somewhere. Something pulled at her shoulder, and she looked back to see Yang pulling back out of the gate and pushing Ruby along as well.  
  
“That- What was that? That can’t be right!” Ruby started to protest.  
  
“Guys, hush,” the blonde told them. “We don’t know what’s going on. Don’t make a scene.”  
  
“B-but…”  
  
“We don’t know what he might have done. Could be a terrible guy or some crazy local thing. We don’t know. Don’t focus on it.”  
  
The girls stood outside the city for several minutes until a loud thud sounded behind them. Soon, the crowd began to disperse, telling them the deed was done. With it seemingly over, they headed back in to see two robed people heading down the street with a stretcher held between them and the body covered by a red sheet. Someone was swabbing the platform, a coppery smell coming from the place.  
  
“Gods, it really happened,” Weiss muttered. “This place performs public executions. How backwards is this country?”  
  
“It’s not right,” Ruby insisted again.  
  
“It’s not,” Blake agreed. “It was nothing less than barbaric. But we couldn’t do anything about it, not without starting a fight with all the police in the city without really knowing why. We’ll have to inform Vale about the situation when we get back.”  
  
Ruby nodded in silent acceptance, and then they moved forward, looking through the city streets for places to buy and sell and a place to sleep. A market was near the center, with stalls and shops alike lined down each side and forming circles in larger crossroads. At first, it seemed like any normal, if primitive human settlement. Then they started noticing a couple of men with almost golden skin and pointed ears. Both were wearing gold-colored armor with a feathery motif, the metal looking light compared to what they normally saw. Blake noticed the glares that came their way, remembering how she and other Faunus were usually the targets of such ire, but then another gold-skinned being, a woman in plain clothes, gave them an even harsher glare. She seemed to be rolling a tomato between her fingers as if thinking of whether or not to throw it before setting it back in her basket and moving on.  
  
“Whoa, those guys were stiff,” Yang observed. “It’s like if you took all the concentrated snoot from Weiss and made it a person.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“Am I the only one who noticed they were gold?” Ruby asked.  
  
“No. It’s just…” A similar person walked by, only with ash-colored skin and red eyes. He started looking at apples, and Yang felt the urge to ask several questions that might have come across as rude. “…Maybe we’re further from Vale than we thought?”  
  


* * *

  
“Okay, so is anyone else as confused as I am about all of this?” Yang asked as she set down another book on “history” that sounded like something out of a fantasy novel. Blake slammed a different book shut and cleared her throat.  
  
“This is supposed to be historical fiction?” she asked the bookstore clerk who had introduced herself as Tiffany.  
  
“You mean _2920_? Yes.”  
  
“How much would you say is history and how much is fiction?”  
  
“Hm, well…" Tiffany paused and tapped her chin. "All the major events happened, though I don’t know if they did in the way it describes. I imagine the minor details were made up. I’m almost certain an Ayleid didn’t appear out of nowhere and help Turala give birth in the middle of the wilds of Cyrodiil, for instance, but it’s agreed upon by many that the destruction of her adopted coven and daughter’s death is what triggered her summoning of Dagon for vengeance’s sake.”  
  
Blake blinked at all of that, flipping forward a bit and tracing lines.  
  
“What’s an Ayleid?” Ruby asked innocently.  
  
“Oh, some sort of elf that was darker than High Elves but lighter than Dark Elves while too tall and muscled to be Wood Elves. They used to rule Cyrodiil, but were scattered thousands of years ago after their Men slaves rebelled.” Tiffany then shrugged. “Who knows? I may be part Ayleid. A lot of them fled into the parts of Daggerfall my family’s from.”  
  
“What would you say…” Weiss tried, thinking her words through carefully, “are the biggest differences between the average human and an elf?”  
  
“Hm, well, if I remember my phylogeny studies correctly… All of us are ‘human’, save maybe the Khajiit but certainly not the Argonians. Mer, or elves most call them, tend to be more magically-inclined, less physical, live longer, and have ears with points usually pointed up. Men, like us- Well, you and most of myself, are more physical and have round ears. Doesn’t mean an elf can’t learn to throw a mean punch or a man can’t cast great spells, but that’s the usual. Does that about answer it?”  
  
“Yes, I believe so.” Weiss nodded while taking in that information. “So, how different are those other two?”  
  
She laughed at that. “By the Eight! Did your folks all skip out on your educations?”  
  
“Hey, we’re from out of town!” Yang called over. “This is all new to us.”  
  
“Out of town? I’d say you never set foot on Tamriel with such blanks in your knowledge. If it weren’t for the clothes, I might think you were from Atmora with the questions.”  
  
“I’ll admit, we’re not from around here. Can you please help us?” Weiss requested.  
  
“Certainly,” the shopkeeper responded cheerfully. “Maybe this will be a good start.” She reached beneath her counter and pulled up a thick book. “ _Heavy Scribe’s Field Guide to Tamriel, 3rd Edition_. It’s one of the most up-to-date books on general knowledge of Tamriel and the Empire. Some people have thought of having the next _Pocket Guide_ be based on it if they can’t find the authors to do it wholesale. You’ll find information on races and peoples in sections three through five. You can ignore six, since those touch on outside areas mostly, unless you’re curious.”  
  
“Thank you so much!” Weiss said cheerfully before going through her wallet. “How much do I- Oh…” She pulled out a lien as she remembered how far away from civilization they were. “I don’t suppose you would accept this?”  
  
Tiffany took the plastic card in hand and turned it around while looking it over.  
  
“Is this supposed to be…money?”  
  


* * *

  
“I can’t believe you traded so much fish!” Blake practically cried.  
  
“It would have gone bad before we used it, and she has mouths to feed,” Weiss argued as she flipped through the book, her nose scrunching at the unprofessional tone that the writers chose for most of the entries. It felt almost like a couple of journals stuck together. The journals of some knowledgeable, curious, and intelligent scribes, but journals all the same. “Besides, I thought if there was one thing that you’d appreciate trading the fish for it would be a book.”  
  
“Not just one.”  
  
“Besides, this brings up another problem.” Weiss closed the book and her eyes then took a deep breath. “As far as this place is concerned, we’re…broke.” Ruby reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder.  
  
“It’s okay, Weiss. Be strong!”  
  
“Don’t be a dunce! It’s not…that terrible. We just need to figure out how to get some money.”  
  
“Perhaps I can be of assistance?” a raspy voice offered. They looked to the side and saw a scaled person with horns on his head and nose and a frill. “Greetings. I hear you’re in need of septims? I happen to have a job that needs doing.”  
  
“Whoa, buddy!” Yang warned him. “Just what are you wanting, huh?”  
  
“Nothing untoward,” he assured her with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry. Just got a job that needs doing. You four are armed and look to be built like warriors. Mind doing a little retrieval quest?”  
  
“Retrieval?” Ruby looked to her teammates. None of them were really objecting to it, but Yang was still a bit tense and Blake was staring at him as though caught in disbelief. She turned back to the reptilian man and nodded. “What do you need?”  
  
“There’s an amulet of mine, passed down through my family. I lost it to some bandit some time ago, but when I tried to chase him down, he ran into a cave full of frostbite spiders. The spiders got him, and there was no way I was going in there. If you could retrieve it, I’ll pay you handsomely. You wouldn’t even need to clear out all the spiders.”  
  
“Frostbite spiders?” Ruby wondered with more than a little revulsion. They certainly didn’t sound like the normal creepy-crawlies, and she wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. “Okay, so…we’ll go get this amulet, and you’ll pay us?”  
  
“What about an advance?” Weiss stepped in. “We need cash to make it there and back, after all.”  
  
“Oh, certainly.” He reached into a pouch and pulled out several coins, then started going through them, picking out three square ones of a white color and ten golden, round coins. “Three malks and ten septims. Should last you a few days if you’re frugal. If you have a map, I can show you where the cave is.”  
  
“Uh, we don’t…have a map,” Ruby bashfully admitted. He blinked, the action a little surprising to them as the extra set of lids came from the sides, then shook his head.  
  
“A bit more advancement is needed, then.”  
  


* * *

  
“Well, it was nice of him to buy us a map,” Ruby figured as she looked it over. “Kinda kills the northwest continent theory, though.” It seemed logical that they might have come upon a settlement on the shore of the least explored continent on Remnant. It would have explained the general ignorance of the people there along with the unknown elements they had run across, and the theory was further fueled by some of the banners having a stylized dragon on them. Instead, from the collection of maps available at Bits and Pieces, they saw a totally different landmass that was unrecognizable in any of their memories.  
  
“This is becoming ridiculous,” Weiss muttered. “How can we have washed up to the shores of a totally unknown continent while going through a well-traveled sea route in a single day? It doesn’t make any sense. Not to mention this place is a complete backwoods still using archaic terms like ‘magic’. We haven’t seen the first instance of any modern technology since arriving.”  
  
“Some places are just behind on that stuff,” Blake explained. “A lot of outlying towns are poor or constantly on the move, so they can’t set up their own industry or purchase anything like that from the major cities. A totally isolated kingdom would probably end up the same.”  
  
“And a totally isolated continent?” Yang pointed out. “I’m almost surprised that we’re even speaking the same language. Let’s be grateful they’ve at least got a working sewer system and decent plumbing.” She tapped a foot against a sewer grate to emphasize her point.  
  
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Weiss complained. “How is there even an _unknown_ continent in the first place? Remnant has been extensively mapped. I don’t doubt there’s a few small islands we may not know about, but a whole continent?”  
  
“Weiss, there’s no use overthinking it,” Ruby reassured her. “We’ll figure it out, but first, we’ve gotta get through today. And tonight.” She started looking around at that. “So, we need to find a hotel or inn or something. Hopefully, that guy gave us more than enough for that, at least. Let’s see… Moon and Nausea…hard no. Ooh, Winking Skeever?”  
  
“Winking what?” the others looked up at a sign with a sort of winking rodent next to a mug painted onto it. They shrugged at the odd sight, then headed inside to see if they could get a place to sleep for the night.  
  


* * *

  
Ruby walked into the inn with a few more non-perishable goods than they had before, taking them up to their rented room to set in the chest for later. After she came back down, she sat with her team at a table. Blake was already helping herself to some fish whereas the other two had an assortment of vegetables and meat. Her eyes then landed on a bottle that Yang was drinking from, and she couldn't help but frown.  
  
“Yang!” she protested, trying to take the adult beverage from her.  
  
“Ah, c’mon sis. It’s just some mead.”  
  
“You’re not old enough for that!” her sister objected.  
  
“Well, here it seems there’s no real drinking age,” Yang explained while setting the bottle down away from her sister’s reach. Ruby, however, continued to glower. “Oh, don’t be like that. I’m not going to go Uncle Qrow on you because of some loose drinking laws.”  
  
“You’d best not,” Weiss added with a bit of her own glare.  
  
“You know their uncle?” Blake asked her after swallowing her food.  
  
“No, but any time someone uses a person they know as a measuring stick, it’s usually serious.”  
  
Something told Blake that Weiss' statement had something else behind it, but decided now wasn't the time to bring it up. Instead, she nodded affirmatively, then dug back into her fish.  
  
Ruby ceased her attempts to prevent Yang from drinking, but let the young man serving them know not to let her have any more. He seemed to take it oddly that the younger girl was acting in charge, but then promised to serve them just clean water for the rest of the night. Ruby received her own plate of food soon after, noting the lack of seasoning in most of it. Thankfully, they still had salt, so it wasn’t too bad. The chicken was well-made, at least.  
  
Several people entered and exited the inn as they dined, most human (or Men, as locals put it) and a few elves. One Argonian came and sat in a corner, but another one never showed after him. Then a group of about four members walked in, plus a large, tiger-like cat dressed in a sort of shawl with bags on its sides and back. The girls stared for a moment, a little intrigued that anyone would bring in such a creature to an establishment, tamed or not. They then noticed the furry tails swinging behind the people, under their cloaks. The common thought was that they might be seeing some Faunus for the first time since arriving in Solitude, then they pulled back their hoods. One had a human-like face, closer to Mer than Man, but cat ears atop his head and fine fur over much of his face. The other three had outright cat faces, something as unprecedented as the reptilian Argonians they’d learned the name of not too long ago. A smaller cat leaped atop the back of the not-tiger, and Ruby decided that deserved a bit more attention when it turned towards her. The cat had a sort of shirt on with an attached hood and a collar with a gem set in it.  
  
“Well hey there,” she greeted the feline. “How are you today, little fella?”  
  
“This one is well and good,” the cat said with a masculine, if tiny voice, his mouth moving a bit with the words and the collar making a small glow. Ruby and the others recoiled slightly with shock, with Blake's jaw slowly lowering as she tried to comprehend the talking cat. “He was simply investigating a scent.” He then turned towards Blake, and the larger feline he was atop of turned to look at them as well.  
  
“Ah, this one sees it,” the bigger one said with a more feminine voice. Both nodded at the Faunus. “Greetings, Ohmes.”  
  
“Uh, hello,” she said back, not sure what to make of what was happening. Talking cats were not a thing any of them were expecting for their day.  
  
“Whoa!” Ruby said lowly in awe. “What are you?”  
  
“This one is Alfiq. His wife is Pahmar,” the smaller cat answered. Team RWBY looked between the two, mostly trying to come to terms with the strikingly different couple being what they were.  
  
“Mother, father, we have rooms,” the human-faced one told the quadrupeds. Now they were very confused.  
  
“Ah, we should see to that. Get the little ones, then. We’ll go and unpack.” He lifted a paw and one of the bags opened as it began to glow. His wife began walking as he sorted through their belongings, the other three bipeds leading them upstairs and the fourth walking out. The girls looked at each other for a moment, then Weiss whipped out her book and rapidly flipped through the pages. She paused at the section describing different races, then turned over to a specific part.  
  
“Khajiit,” she read aloud, “the feline denizens of Elsweyr. Khajiit are one of the most…” Her eyes widened and then she rotated the tome around to let her fellows see it. There was an illustration showing different forms of the race, ranging from the housecat-sized sort like they had just met to a form that seemed larger than a rhinoceros, the next biggest being almost half its size.  
  
“Whoa!” Ruby intoned. “There’s, like, a dozen of them.”  
  
“Wait, so that was a Khajiit family?” Yang asked. Right then, the one that had gone outside reentered, a couple of smaller Khajiit in his arms with proportions that suggested childhood. Three others followed him, one looking like an elf with cat ears that reached his waist, and two that walked on all fours but had sloped backs reminiscent of a gorilla. The elfish one sniffed and then looked at their table, her eyes settling on the fish Blake was nearly finished with before gaining that familiar look, drool threatening to spill out from the corner of her mouth. One of the others head-butted her back, pushing her forward despite her small, foreign protesting. Ruby and Yang giggled at the sight while Weiss covered her mouth to hide her smile. Blake watched them a moment longer, her bow twitching about.  
  
“Huh,” Yang muttered as she looked over the entry of Khajiit, “so we’ve got cats, big cats, monkey cats, cat people, catty people, and super cat Faunus.”  
  
Blake bristled a bit. “They’re not Faunus,” she insisted.  
  
“Right. Didn’t mean anything by it,” she apologized. “Just seemed like… Well, whatever they are, they’re people.” She shut the book and handed it back to Weiss.  
  
“People we’ve never seen before. I’m starting to wonder how hidden this place is.” Weiss started flipping through some other pages. “Geography, customs, whole new species of _people_ … And apparently religion. Just what we were missing, a polity three steps from a theocracy.”  
  
“It can’t be that bad,” Ruby insisted.  
  
“Maybe not, but they honestly believed the Imperial line was chosen and/or descended from the Gods. “  
  
“So, it got better?”  
  
Weiss turned a few pages and traced some lines. “If you can call the least terrible warlord after a near-collapse of society better?” She narrowed her eyes in incredulity. “A collapse that apparently came from a literal invasion from _Hell_?”  
  
“…Well, he was the least terrible.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Night had long since fallen, and the girls were going through their items and making sure everything was distributed properly. Ruby was fiddling with her gunsmithing kit, proud of being right about possibly needing it as they hadn’t run into a single gun or ammo seller. In fact, they hadn’t found a Dust shop either, which probably meant there was some tight control over the substance being enforced. What’s worse, they didn’t know what the locals called it. The best answers they were getting was ‘magic’ and the ‘College of Winterhold’, which pointed them to the other end of the country. That meant the only ammo they had until they figured that out was what they had on hand, or what Ruby was able to put together with her kit. Even then, they needed Dust itself to make bullets.  
  
Weiss was making sure each of them had a decent amount of food packed, along with checking to make sure they had purifier straws ready. While the innkeeper had assured them that the water he served was boiled (at least they weren’t too far behind on health safety), any traveling outside of civilization wouldn’t offer them the same courtesy. She was glad she had insisted on packing such things. At first, the sisters tried to convince her that their home had all the amenities of civilized life, just in a more rustic setting, but she finally got it through to them that that wasn’t her concern. She knew that travel on Remnant could be fickle. Airships would go down, trains would derail, and boats got lost in storms. It was better to be overprepared than underprepared, and here she was, prepared. Weiss resisted the urge to gloat, knowing it was beneath her, tempting as it was.  
  
Yang stretched out after making sure her clothes were packed properly, now changed into an outfit better able to stand the cold, and walked over to the window. She was beginning to feel stuffy, and if she felt it, then surely everyone else did.  
  
“Y’all good if I open the window for a bit?” after a low chorus of affirmatives, she opened up the wooden window shutters and took a deep breath of the cold night air. “Man, it might be a tiny little city without a single electric light, but it at least gives a perfect view of the night sk-”  
  
At Yang’s sudden silence, the rest of the team looked over at her to see what was the matter. She was standing as though frozen, looking up at the night sky. Blake and Ruby went to her side first, Ruby tugging on her arm a bit to try and get her attention.  
  
“Yang? Everything okay?”  
  
Weiss sighed and went over to see what was the matter, standing right behind them as Yang finally moved, pointing up at the sky without a word. The girls followed her finger and immediately went still. Hanging among the stars, rather than a single, shattered moon, there was a pair of whole bodies. One was large and red, maybe the size of the one they were used to, if that one was a perfect sphere like this one appeared to be. A sliver of it was hidden in shadow, marking it as near-full in its phase. The other was much smaller and white, with only a little more than half of it visible, about halfway across the night sky from its fellow satellite.  
  
The girls stood and stared out the window at the impossible image, barely able to note the unfamiliar patterns of stars with the giant, glowing sign in the sky.  
  
“Guys,” Ruby quietly croaked, “I don’t think we’re in Remnant anymore.”


	2. Into the Unknown

The next portion of the rewrite brought to you by the wonderful workers of the Dragon Rose team, [xTRESTWHOx](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/357862/) and [NaanContributor](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/321209/)  
  


* * *

  
Chapter 2: Into the Unknown

* * *

  
  
_August 7th_   
  


* * *

* * *

  
For a long moment, none of the girls moved or responded. They just stared up at the impossible sky filled with stars and constellations they didn't recognize and _two_ intact moons. Yang was the first, going over to a mattress, laying down, and just curling up with her back to everyone. Blake fell against the same bed and slid down to sit on the floor, her hands on her face and her eyes wide but unseeing. Weiss started backing away, then shook her head and made a joyless laugh.  
  
“Okay, I get it now!” she declared, almost quivering and her voice increasingly becoming high-pitched. “I was already feeling seasick, I had some strong medicine, and then I ate that fish… I’m hallucinating. A whole…made up scenario is running through my brain, just on the edge of believable. I’m probably going to be treated at any moment now in a hospital near the port, and then I’ll be waking up and this will all…” She stopped her small tirade as Ruby came up to her and put her hands to Weiss’ shoulders.  
  
“Weiss,” Ruby said calmly, “it’s real. I’m right here, with you.”  
  
The heiress seemed to gasp in a breath and release it slow and raggedly, tears appearing in her eyes before she leaned forward and into her friend’s embrace. Ruby held her like that, gently patting her back while rocking them back and forth, slowly. Nearer the window, Yang managed to uncurl and looked back out to confirm that the moons were still there, then looked down at Blake. The Faunus seemed to have gone limp, and Yang was able to reach over and nudged at her head a bit, getting her attention.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“A-are you?” Blake asked right back before looking at the window again. “You… It’s really real, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah,” Yang relayed, looking back out again. “It’s real. God, I don’t… What does this mean?”  
  
Ruby guided Weiss over to sit on the other bed and then hugged her friend again before sitting next to her. The four young women looked at each other, none speaking for a long moment before Ruby spoke.  
  
“Okay, so this is more than we expected.”  
  
“You can say that again,” Yang put in.  
  
“But it’ll be fine. I know it will.” Ruby smiled, and Weiss seemed to lean onto her, prompting the younger girl to put her arm around her shoulder. “I don’t know how we got here, but we got here somehow. That means there’s got to be a way back. And we’ll figure it out. But one step at a time.”  
  
“What’s the first?” Blake asked, pulling herself back up from the floor.  
  
“First step… Well, first major step is getting money, but that shouldn’t be too hard. We might be students, but we’re still Huntresses. We’ve already got a job, in fact.”  
  
“Oh right,” Yang recalled. “Spider cave. Uh, what kind of Grimm are frostbite spiders?”  
  
Ruby shrugged, and the other two didn’t seem to know either. Yang just shook her head.  
  
“Ugh, hate spiders…”  
  
“But, our real first step is getting some sleep,” Ruby declared. “We’ve got traveling to do tomorrow, and that’s no small task.”  
  
The girls could agree to that much. Yang shut up the window then went back to lay down. As they started to get comfortable, Weiss sat up for a long moment and looked over at her team leader.  
  
“Ruby…”  
  
“Yeah, Weiss?”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
The girl smiled and then gave the heiress a sideways hug.  
  
“No problem,” Ruby said. “It’s a leader’s job to make sure their team’s okay, and a good friend’s job to make sure her bestie is happy.”  
  
“Don’t ruin it,” Weiss said with a small grin. She was released from the hug and they settled in to sleep, Blake blowing out the candle that lit up half the room, leaving just the fireplace’s slowly dying embers to illuminate the room.  
  
Despite how much they tried, sleep came to them slowly, and even then it was restless.  
  


* * *

  
Morning came, and the girls left the city, heading down the road towards their goal. Just outside the walls were a few homes and farms, including one with a horse stable right past the main entrance. After talking it over, they decided they didn’t really need (nor could they afford) some horses right now. Their first planned stop was in a place called Dragon Bridge, a settlement that lay next to a river gorge and, from what they heard, had a large and ancient bridge that tended to attract visitors in normal times. Along with being on a main road between several capitals, it was oft visited and well-traveled.  
  
“Okay, so a Hold is like a county or district,” Weiss explained while reading through their _Field Guide_. “We’re in Haafingar, which is basically the capital Hold of Skyrim, a province of the Empire.”  
  
“ _The_ Empire?” Yang asked. “So, there’s not, like, competing empires to differentiate from?”  
  
“Well, if what I’m reading is right,” Weiss said while flipping a few pages, “technically no. There is, however, a polity known as the Aldmeri Dominion, which is functionally a competing empire. They had a war about twenty-five years ago, but the treaty at its end has caused a lot of tension within the Empire.”  
  
“Is that why that guy was yelling about Ulfric and the Stormcloaks?” Ruby wondered aloud. Said guy had been a prisoner being led back to Solitude by a trio of guards. They hadn’t paid the girls too much mind, but their prisoner had told them that if they knew any ‘true sons and daughters of Skyrim’ that they should direct them to Windhelm. The soldiers just kept pushing him on with one telling them to be on their way. They mostly agreed not to touch that situation even with a ten-foot pole.  
  
“That seems to be a little more recent than the book’s publication, but the authors definitely predicted things coming to a head.” She flipped back a few pages. “Going by this and the map, the cave we’re heading to will be near the three-way border point of Whiterun Hold, Hjaalmarch, and the Reach. Afterward, we’ll be close to Rorickstead, so we could stop there before heading back up.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan,” Blake agreed.  
  
“Yeah, but I got a bit more to the plan if we’re cool with it,” Yang suggested while pointing out some houses and a stone structure as they crested a hill. “That Dragon Bridge?”  
  
“Yes, actually,” Weiss confirmed while looking at the map. “We’re making good time.”  
  
“Nice. Hey Ruby, wanna go hunting?”  
  
“Hunting? Like for food?” the younger sister curiously asked.  
  
“Yeah. Hasn’t been any Grimm the whole way here, so we could use the target practice, the food, and the fur.”  
  
“Fur would sell well,” Weiss contemplated before looking through the book. “I’m not seeing anything about poaching laws…”  
  
“Which means there isn’t any,” Yang figured before leading them off the road. “C’mon guys, twilight’s coming.”  
  
The others chased after her, Weiss packing her book away and Ruby taking out Crescent Rose, switching the ammo type for some low-grade shots. They still packed more of a punch than something along the lines of, say, a twenty-two rifle, but they wouldn’t blow a hole bigger than her fist through any unfortunate prey they found. Yang soon found a spot and then settled in atop an old log, the other three following suit as she dragged some nearby brush and branches into a rudimentary blind around them.  
  
“What are we doing?” Weiss asked, only for Ruby to shush her.  
  
“Waiting,” Yang whispered.  
  
“And how do you know something will come through here?” she whispered back. Yang pointed over to a couple of oak trees nearby with disturbed ground beneath their boughs.  
  
“Critters like acorns,” she simply explained. “Make sure your coats are covering anything bright,” she added, putting word to action by tying back her own golden locks under a beige kerchief and tucking the ends beneath the collar of her shirt, before sitting still as a statue. Weiss pulled the drab, brown coat a little more closed, looking out across the patch of forest they were in and then her teammates. Yang and Blake both seemed experienced and calm, but Ruby was a little giddier, putting some kind of camouflage net over her weapon before resting it on her lap. Weiss released a breath and waited. And waited. And waited. Just when she was beginning to grow aggravated at the boredom and worried about the sinking sun, Blake’s attention was taken as her bow twitched. Everyone followed her gaze and watched as a few deer slowly made their way towards the area. They seemed extremely cautious, taking a few steps towards the patch before stopping, then continuing again. Once they were all in sight, Yang leaned a little and whispered even lower than before.  
  
“Get the buck,” she told Ruby, almost inaudible to Weiss’ ears. The younger sister took aim at the largest specimen, a buck with antlers that maybe had close to twenty points or so. Weiss waited for the gunshot to sound out, but nothing came. As she wondered what the holdup was, she saw Ruby lower the gun and pass it to her sister.  
  
“It’s okay,” Yang reassured her before aiming it herself. Weiss wondered if she had ever used Ruby’s sniper-scythe before right before the shot boomed, a sharp contrast to the silence they had grown used to. The buck ran instantly, and soon the small herd followed suit.  
  
“I think you missed,” Weiss pointed out while rubbing one ear.  
  
“Nah, I got him,” Yang responded as she handed back Ruby’s weapon. She patted the younger girl’s shoulder before walking towards where the deer had run. After going around some bushes and brambles, they came across the buck’s body, now with a hole in its chest. Red blood stained the brown fur, and a small pool flowed out onto the green grass beneath and around its body.  
  
“Heart shot,” Blake noted. “Good aim.”  
  
“Yeah. People are always surprised about that for some reason. Like shotgun gauntlets are easy to accurately shoot or something.”  
  
Weiss’ eyebrows went up at that. She never put much thought into it, but now she realized how hard it must actually be to aim something like that, especially since they fired through a punching motion. She suddenly found a new respect for the skill she never associated with their brawler too much.  
  
“Well, now to take this guy and bag him. You think we’ll have to clean him, or would there be a butcher in town?”  
  
“Let’s check for butchers first,” Blake suggested. “Less messy that way.”  
  


* * *

  
After checking a few sources, Weiss was able to convince the butcher to give them twenty-eight septims for the carcass. He originally wanted it for twenty-two, but Weiss was able to haggle it up by pointing out the low damage to the edible meat and the size of the antlers. With several more of the gold coins to their name, Weiss walked away happily.  
  
“So, how much is twenty-eight septims?” Ruby asked as they settled in at the Four Shields.  
  
“See these?” Weiss asked as she showed Ruby the square, white coins. “These are malks, or marks in some areas. Each one is worth ten septims.”  
  
“About the same cost as a room at an inn,” Ruby realized. Both the Winking Skeever and the Four Shields Tavern charged the same price for a room per night. Weiss figured it was regulated by law.  
  
“Exactly. Assuming no one ends up wanting some extra privacy, making more than ten septims a day will be the minimum needed for profit. That’s not accounting for food and other necessities.”  
  
“So, a deer a day will keep the bill collectors at bay?” Yang joked. Weiss glared, but Ruby actually giggled at that one.  
  
“I wonder how much a moose is worth?” Blake asked no one in particular.  
  
“Whoa, Blake, walk before you run!” Yang warned her.  
  
“We’re Huntresses. We fight Grimm every other weekend,” the Faunus pointed out.  
  
“You’ve never seen a moose, have you?” Yang asked her. Ruby thought back, and she couldn’t say she had either. Though she did hear stories about moose from neighbors. One time a couple swam all the way from the mainland, somehow. Someone hunted them down after they caused a bit of property damage and really hurt an old lady. They hadn’t even had any Aura, which could be a roll of the dice when it came to wild animals. The thought of what might’ve happened if those moose _had_ unlocked their Auras left her shuddering. They probably would have needed her dad or uncle to personally fight them!  
  
“Even I know you should careful about moose,” Weiss said. “Granted, I’d be more worried about polar bears or the like.”  
  
“Ooh, now how much would that be worth?” Yang wondered.  
  
“I’ll check possible price ranges before we start hunting dangerous predators like that,” Weiss told her. “Besides that, we could do Grimm hunting. Much more to our level. It’s what we’re all trained for, and I’ll admit I’m also more comfortable with killing soulless monsters for money than innocent animals.” She shot Ruby a sympathetic glance at that, receiving a grateful smile in return.  
  
“Physically less of a hassle too,” Yang agreed with an exaggerated roll of her shoulder, “Since _I’m_ the one who had to carry that whole buck all the way over here. Don’t have to deal with any carcasses from Grimm.”  
  
“Yeah, although it’s weird that we haven’t spotted any Grimm yet,” Ruby pointed out before they all froze. “Wait, _are_ there Grimm here? It’s…another world, after all.”  
  
“Not thinking about this,” Weiss immediately announced before lying down and putting her fingers to her head. “One restless night was enough. Not going to think about otherworldly Grimm or lack thereof.”  
  
“Right, forget I asked.” Ruby set out her gunsmithing kit and went through her spent casings and Dust loadout. She didn’t have much, but she could fashion a few bullets. “We figure out who holds the Dust?”  
  
“I asked those officials, Penitus Oculatus,” Blake explained. “They didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, but figured it was magic. Seems there’s two places we can get any reliably. Court Wizards are the first, but there’s only one or two in every Hold and they work directly for the Jarls, and most are probably too occupied with their own stuff. The other is the College of Winterhold.”  
  
“There’s that College again,” Yang pointed out. “You sure there’s nowhere else we can get some?”  
  
“Not unless we want to dig up our own.”  
  
“May as well dig up our own metals if we’re going to do that,” Weiss said. “So, we can try one of these ‘wizards’, and if they’re too busy or refuse, we can make for this college. Maybe there we can find out a little more about what happened to us.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan,” Ruby agreed. “We’ve got some direction, at least. Okay, then. We’ll try the wizards.” She giggled at that. “Boy, it’d be something if they used ‘real’ magic.”  
  
“Haha,” Weiss deadpanned before smiling. “As if.”  
  


* * *

  
Travel from Dragon Bridge was mostly uneventful at this point. The girls looked over the impressive stone construct that gave the small town its name as they crossed it, but didn’t linger. They spotted a few men watching them from far away, up on a hill or some other high-rise. A couple of other travelers decided to go along with them, so their numbers were likely keeping any unscrupulous sorts from attacking. One man had a laden wagon that went at about walking speed that he offered for the tired to sit on the back of whenever they needed to. It was an offer the four Huntresses graciously accepted, but despite the seeming lack of danger, Team RWBY unconsciously took a defensive stance around the dozen or so civilians. They couldn't help it. This was an entirely new world they were only on for the past day and a half. None of them knew what dangers lurked. Only one man looked like a warrior out of them all, a double-bladed steel axe on his back and a basic, iron chest plate with some hide armor around and under it. Nothing compared to what they had, of course, but Ruby, being the weapon geek she was, couldn't help but gawk over it.  
  
“So, what kind of steel did they use to make it?” Ruby asked, trying to get whatever information she could out of the man about his weapon.  
  
“I didn’t worry too much ‘bout that sorta thing." The man shrugged. "I just grabbed axes off the wall until one felt right, then I bought it.”  
  
“Oh, well, at least you made sure it was a good one. You wouldn’t believe how many people grabbed the first thing they could and tried to fight with it.”  
  
“I reckon I could,” he responded with a sigh. “Little whelps think they’re invincible until they get shown how fragile they really are. Think they can just run in and take on the world.”  
  
“I wouldn’t put it like that, but yeah, some people can get pretty cocky.”  
  
The man moved to respond, clearly enjoying the conversation with Ruby, when someone screamed in fright. Several people scattered as a roar sounded out, sounding like a hippo mixed with a dinosaur. The girls all turned to see a brown, three-eyed creature holding a woman by the leg. She looked to be a Bosmer, and was desperately trying to pull herself free of the monster’s three claws. It slung her around, causing her to scream in pain, then Blake’s variant ballistic chain-scythe stabbed into its arm and yanked it forward. The beast roared as it dropped the woman and pulled back, causing Blake to brace herself and strain against its strength.  
  
“Troll!” someone yelled before it ripped its arm free of Gambol Shroud. It went back after the woman, who was crawling away, but then Yang got in front of it and socked it across the face. It stumbled back, and Ruby rushed in to help get the woman out of the way. Yang repeatedly punched the troll, blocking its own heavy swings with her arms before returning five punches between them. The man had his axe out and swung into its back with a battlecry, digging in deep, but not quite felling it. Weiss readied herself to join in when a dark-skinned Dunmer ran up with his fingers curled.  
  
“Get clear!” he called out in warning, and the two fighters jumped back. The troll seemed to be recovering, pulling itself back up off its knees, but then fire sprang up from the elf’s hands then shot out in a blazing roar, muffling the troll’s own cries. Weiss and the rest of her team stared flabbergasted at the display of raw power. They wondered what kind of Semblance this was, but part of them felt that this was something different. Something they couldn't quite pin down. A few seconds later, the Dunmer stopped and the troll was shown to be nearly burned to a crisp. It still moved, as if trying to overcome its wounds, but the warrior stepped forward and brought his axe down on its head, splitting the skull and finally killing it.  
  
“Damn thing must have been starving to attack a group this big in broad daylight,” the man said before kicking a roasted arm. “Looks scrawny.”  
  
“Whatever it was doing, it hurt Drolsi,” the Dunmer bit out before going to where Ruby had carried the Bosmer woman.  
  
“What was that?” Yang asked, looking at the monster’s corpse, noting that it wasn’t sublimating like a Grimm, not that she thought it was one. At the same time, she couldn't help but glance occasionally at the Dark Elf as he extinguished the fire cupped in his hands.  
  
“Troll,” the man said as though it was obvious. “Never saw a troll before?”  
  
“Uh, not in real life,” Yang decided to answer.  
  
“Well, I suppose stories either under or oversell it. " The man shrugged and shook his head. "They’re tough, but not unstoppable. Simple, but not stupid. Probably would have killed it without the elf’s help, but it would’ve taken longer.”  
  
“Yeah, it did feel tough,” Yang admitted. Its body seemed cushioned by a layer of fat, though if this was a starving one then it probably didn’t have that much compared to normal. The Dunmer’s fire didn’t mix well with that, for the troll, anyway. The fat burned and boiled under its skin, some of it visibly leaking out as an oily liquid. She decided to leave the smelly corpse alone and went over to see Weiss and Ruby watching as some sort of cream was applied to the woman’s wounded leg. She figured it was medicinal, but as a gash on her calf started to seal like a zipper was being slowly drawn, _without_ the accompanying glow of an Aura, Yang blinked and rubbed her eyes before looking back to make sure what she was seeing was real.  
  
“Here, drink this potion,” the Dunmer offered her after uncorking a vial. “Should help with the bones.”  
  
“Thank the Gods for alchemy,” she muttered before swallowing the liquid. She then hummed out a sigh and looked at the girls. “Thank you for helping me there. My leg or more of me might be in a troll’s belly if you hadn’t stepped in.” She then looked over to where the warrior was walking. “And thank you as well, sir.”  
  
He harrumphed. “Just doing what anyone’d do,” he brushed off the thanks. Ruby smiled brightly.  
  
“Doesn’t make you less of a hero,” the young Huntress told him. He kept his gruff composure, but didn’t say anything against it. For the next several minutes, the group recollected themselves, waiting for the Bosmer woman's leg to fully heal and the horses to calm down before they set off. Yang and the Nord, as he described himself, went out to ensure there wasn't anything else lurking out there. Ruby and Blake, meanwhile, watched over the injured woman, leaving a curious Weiss to carefully approach the Dunmer who had gravely injured the troll.  
  
"Excuse me, sir?" Weiss asked, grabbing the Dunmer's attention.  
  
"Yes?" he asked, and Weiss nodded.  
  
"That fire you made. I'm curious, what Dust or Semblance was that? I've never seen a technique like that before."  
  
"Dust? Semblance?" the Dunmer asked, completely confused. Again, Weiss was reminded that she was in another world, and judging from her previous discussion with the Penitus Oculatus, it was likely such terminology was different.  
  
"Sorry, I'm not from around here," Weiss replied. "I believe your people call it...'magic?'" The heiress couldn't believe she was seriously using that term, even more so when the Dunmer nodded in recognition.  
  
"Right, right. Thought that's what you meant. That was simply a Flames spell. Real easy, Novice-level Destruction spell. Anyone can learn it."  
  
"Is that so?" Weiss asked, looking about his person to try and find the Dust shard he must've used as fuel. If it was as easy as he made it out to be, it would be wise of her to try and pick it up herself. If she was going to be stuck in this other world without any access to her resources, she and the rest of her team would need all the help they could get.  
  
"Yep. In fact," the Dunmer said as he reached into a hip pouch and began to rummage around. At first, Weiss thought he was searching for a Dust crystal or form of apparatus, but instead he pulled out a worn hardcover book with the symbol of a burning hand stitched into its cover. "Here, this is an old spellbook of mine."  
  
"A...book?" Weiss softly spoke as the Dunmer handed it to her.  
  
"I'm not using it anymore, and you seem like the type of person who'd be able to pick up on the clever craft pretty easily," he said. "Think of it as payment for your friends’ help in saving Drolsi’s life."  
  
"I... Thank you, sir," Weiss replied after a momentary pause. The Dunmer nodded at her just as Yang and the Nord returned. The two called out that they were all clear, and at that moment the Bosmer woman shakily rose with the assistance of Ruby and Blake.  
  
With the entire group now ready to move out again, they piled back into the wagon and rode off. Ruby and the Nord returned to their previous conversation on weapons and combat techniques while the others kept a watchful eye on their surroundings. Weiss, meanwhile, pulled out the tome and opened it. She pored over its contents, seeing terms without any idea of what they meant. 'Magicka,' 'Aetherius,' 'Oblivion,' and more were thrown around as though they were common knowledge, and Weiss wanted nothing more than to dismiss them as the superstitions of a primitive culture. Yet, she couldn't help but think back to the Dunmer's display of power, and as she continued to read, she began to feel that perhaps it wasn't as far-fetched as she wanted to believe.  
  


* * *

  
The party dispersed as they reached Rorickstead. Night was closing in, so the girls saved the search for the cave for the next day. Asking around helped to point them in the right direction of it, though most of the people warned them against going there.  
  
“Ain’t right, whatever it is,” one man had told them. “Folks go in there and never come out. Seems to be far more than just spiders in that cave.”  
  
"Sometimes, I hear something wail from that way at night," another woman shakily replied. More and more of the townspeople reported the same thing, and by the time Team RWBY made it to their room, they were all feeling a little unnerved.  
  
“Right, so does anybody get the feeling this place might be more than we expected?” Yang asked her teammates. All of them nodded, but rather than dwell on it they focused on the task at hand.  
  
“I found an entry on frostbite spiders,” Weiss started, showing them an illustration just below an article. “Apparently, they’re literally just large spiders.”  
  
Yang shivered. “Seriously?”  
  
“Seriously. I also read a bit about trolls, but let’s focus on the spiders for now. They’re predatory, but do make webs and sometimes catch prey in them. However, given their size, that prey can range from large rodents to humans. They also spit poison, though it’s not too deadly if treated quickly. I think they should be pretty simple to kill, as long as we’re careful.”  
  
“Right,” Ruby agreed. “We’ll need to take it slow and get used to them. Since they’re not Grimm, they’ll have some self-preservation instincts, so we might not have to fight them all. We’ve just got to retrieve the amulet.”  
  
“Speaking of, did we get a description of that?” Blake asked. Weiss started to answer, before her whole body froze.  
  
“Actually, we didn’t. Ah, by the Lovers and Brothers!”  
  
“It’s okay, Weiss,” Ruby reassured her. “We’ll just grab any amulets that might be there and ask him which is the right one when we get back.”  
  
“Okay, well… I guess that’ll have to do. But if that’s the case, we might have to scour the cave for anything that _might_ be the right one.”  
  
“Aw,” Yang groaned, resigned to her fate of having to deal with the eight-legged creepy-crawlies.  
  


* * *

  
“And that’s Bessa,” Sissel explained to Ruby, who was watching the cows eat hay with her. “She’s the oldest, but she’s tough. Ennis says that one time, she ran down a bear by herself.”  
  
“Wow! That really is tough,” Ruby admitted. Bessa seemed to be just a normal cow, at that, making it that much more impressive. While Zwei taking out an Ursa was amazing from a certain point of view, he had an unlocked Aura and had been taught to fight Grimm for almost as long as Ruby had. He was practically a Huntsman himself. A small frown briefly crossed her face as she wondered how Zwei and the others would've reacted to their disappearance, but forced herself not to dwell on it for very long lest the younger girl notice.  
  
Sissel then froze when a girl who looked exactly like her showed up, a mean glare on her face. The other girl paused when she walked up, seeing Ruby, but then continued on her approach, a smirk appearing as she did.  
  
"You're gonna get it, Sissel!" the girl teased her.  
  
"Why? What did I do?"  
  
"I told you to weed the garden by sunset, and you didn't do it. Now you're in big trouble."  
  
"Papa told you to do that, not me! Now leave me alone!"  
  
Ruby was frowning and decided to step in at that.  
  
“Hey, knock it off,” she told the young girl. “That’s your sister, right? You should always have your family’s back, not pick on them or make life hard for them.”  
  
The girl sneered at her. “What do you know?!”  
  
“Plenty. Family should be there to help one another, not put each other down.”  
  
Sissel’s sister just frowned and walked away. Ruby sighed and looked back to the girl who she’d stood up for.  
  
“Thank you,” the local girl muttered.  
  
“Don’t mention it,” Ruby told her while gently rubbing the top of her hair.  
  


* * *

  
“Nice goat,” Yang mentioned to a guy walking said goat on a leash.  
  
“Thank you. She’s a prize winner,” he proudly told them before moving on. Yang hummed in thought before taking a sip of cider.  
  
“I was thinking of a joke, but he seemed so genuinely honored.”  
  
“Anyone else getting a weird vibe from this place?” Blake asked. “I heard the mayor-founder talking with some guy about the way the harvest is going this year. He was wondering how it was doing so well, but the guy insisted it was just the hard work everyone put into it.”  
  
“Well, that’s not unusual,” Yang mentioned.  
  
“I mean, he _insisted_. It was like he was afraid of people thinking of any possible alternative explanation. Just weird.”  
  
“Huh, that does sound weird. Maybe he’s superstitious?” she suggested.  
  
“Maybe.” She didn’t mention the part where Rorick muttered something about figuring there was something else at play, but decided that Yang was right about there being some superstition the people might have.  
  
Weiss walked up from the marketplace, releasing a sigh as she did. “So, questions have led us down the same path. Wizards and magic.”  
  
“Maybe they’re just what they call people with Aura?” Yang suggested. “Like in that movie where wizards were just people with, like, all of the Semblances and didn’t need Dust.”  
  
“Or Galaxy Wars,” Blake proposed.  
  
“I already figured it was just local parlance. I just wish we had more options than a single, isolated school or one of a dozen government employees.” She sighed and joined them on the Frostfruit Inn’s porch. Ruby came bounding up soon enough, a small smile on her face.  
  
“So, is everything good?” she asked her team.  
  
“As good as it can be,” Weiss answered. “We’re ready for the trip to the cave, and we’re pretty much supplied to head out the moment we’re done.”  
  
“That’s good. Once we’re done there, we’ll figure out the very next step,” she declared. “It should either be getting to that college, getting a step closer, or getting some personal attention from a wizard. Whichever is more available at the time.”  
  
“Should work out,” Yang figured. “Maybe Ish and Mail will have washed up by the time we get back to Solitude, and they can help us figure out how we got here.”  
  
“How _would_ we have gotten here?” Ruby wondered. “I still haven’t figured that out.”  
  
“Well, in books and sci-fi movies, usually people go through some kind of portal,” Blake explained. “The only problem is…we were out on the sea. Storms aren’t uncommon, but they’re usually more fantasy.”  
  
“True. Storms are usually a thematic source, not scientific,” Ruby agreed.  
  
“Well, there’s a sub-theory I have,” Weiss relayed while opening her book. “This place does know about the other planets in their system, but they don’t match up with our own. They’re also named after the gods of the primary pantheon worshipped by most of Tamriel. Kynerath was my first guess, since it seems to contain life, but I got to looking further. None of the constellations match up.”  
  
“Well, that’s expected, right?” Yang asked. “We’re on another planet, after all.”  
  
“True, but it’s more than that. If we were in the same system, we’d see most of the same constellations, the only difference being where the planets appear as stars. The night sky of this world, Nirn, is wholly different from the one on Remnant. That’s not getting into the planets.”  
  
“What are the planets?” Ruby asked, a curious glint in her eye as she looked over Weiss’ shoulder.  
  
“Like I said, they’re named after the Eight Divines, which are Kynerath, Akatosh, Zenithar, Mara, Julianos, Dibella, Stenndar, and Arkay. The planet we're on they call Nirn,” she pointed out while going over the illustration of the planets and their orbits. “Our solar system only has four planets, including Remnant, though some scientists think they found a fifth one with the new observatory up in Solitas. Obviously, this place is behind on the science, as they use a geocentric model. Not to mention the plain oddness in the way they orbit. They go all over the place, and Arkay doesn't even look like it orbits anything. More importantly, none of the smaller rocky planets look like a brown rust ball like Ramsey does. Kynerath, like I mentioned, has been noted to have a green and blue surface, likely covered in forests and seas, though it’s noted that storms often appear. Akatosh is the largest, probably a gas giant similar to Hullum or Sorola. Zenithar is the second largest, and Mara and Dibella orbit around Zenithar. Apparently, they believe there are “angelic cities” on those two. Whether that means there are actually people on those worlds or a case of mistaken observation, I can’t say. The writer seems convinced they’re an aspect of the heavens brought close to Mundus, or the mundane world.”  
  
As Weiss told more of the world’s lore to her teammates, they all listened with rapt attention, eventually getting a little lost and going further and further into the details of the world, its beliefs, and its cultures, until finally, they forced themselves to retire for the night.  
  


* * *

  
The girls left for the cave first thing in the morning. Mostly backtracking up the road, they quickly found it hidden in the woods a fair distance from the path. Spiderwebs lined most of the opening, thick and silky. Weiss test-touched some of the substance, finding it to not be very sticky.  
  
“Must be lined along the walls for insulation,” she figured as she rubbed her fingertips across her thumbs. Blake mostly led them along, being able to see far more clearly in the dark cave than the rest of them. She paused a moment before taking up a lighter and flicking it on up against the wall, catching the end of a torch aflame and burning away some webs near it. She pulled it free of a sconce and handed it back to Yang, who smiled as she took it in hand.  
  
“Torchlight. How medieval!” Yang joked, causing her partner to roll her eyes.  
  
“Well, you’re free to use up your scroll’s battery,” Blake told her.  
  
“Eh, I’ve got half a year before I’ve got to replace it.” Despite saying it, she didn’t take out the device and continued using the old torch. A little way further, something jumped out and squealed at them. Yang squealed in return and stamped on it, leaving a green splotch with eight twitching legs around it.  
  
“Sweet mother of-” Yang began as she turned to face the wide-eyed members of her team. "I know you said they’d be big, but…!”  
  
“That…was probably a little one,” Weiss mentioned, finding it hard to believe herself. Blake suddenly took out her blades and stood at the ready.  
  
“It was definitely a little one! Dodge!”  
  
Everyone moved as a glob of venomous-looking fluid went past them, and something shrieked. They looked forward to see a pair of spiders that came up to their waists and drew their own weapons. Yang screamed as one came at her, jabbing the torch into its face then punching it back. Weiss stabbed at the other one’s eyes, getting one and making it back away and chitter in pain. Blake swiped her blades across its face, scoring deep hits, but not quite killing it. Ruby rushed at the one her sister was beating back and sliced three of its legs off. It fell, and Yang stamped on its head, squishing its brain and ending its struggles. Weiss pierced one of the wounds Blake left on the other and stabbed deeply into it. The spider struggled a moment, then went still as it slid back.  
  
“Oh, I’m going to be sick,” Yang complained as she handed the torch over to Weiss and stumbled away from the green ichor and spider corpses. She heaved a moment, but nothing came out, leaving her gasping for breath before standing up and rejoining the others. “Let’s get to looking for that necklace, already.”  
  
“Right,” Ruby said. “Lead the way, Blake.”  
  
"How can those things even breathe...?" Weiss whispered to herself as she stared at the corpse of a spider the size of a large dog. Blake silently wondered the same thing, whereas Yang and Ruby (neither of whom knew about spider biology) wondered what she meant, but soon they all shook those thoughts out of their heads.  
  
The Faunus nodded once they all looked at her, and they headed deeper into the cave. They started coming across braziers, which Yang lit after tossing in an old, spider web covered bag of coal set near them, each one providing a good bit more light than before. Something like a room with rotted furniture and a collapsed door was seen to their right, but as they went to enter it, a chest-high spider dropped from above. All of them screamed at that, but beat the creature to death in short order.  
  
“Ceiling! Ceiling!” Yang shouted while holding up her torch, only to start whimpering. Several spiders the size of their hands were crawling away, with one slightly bigger taking a defensive stance against the threatening torch. The others started shivering at the sight, realizing they might have been walking under a handful of oversized spiders at any given moment.  
  
"Don't look up, don't look up," Ruby muttered to herself, shivering slightly from fear. None of her teammates judged her, for they felt the same thing.  
  
They went into the room, Yang and Blake watching out for ceiling spiders while Ruby and Weiss dug around, looking for any sign of the amulet. They ended up finding three necklaces, but two didn’t have anything on them. Still, they packed them away along with the scattered coins that they found, then moved along further into the cave. The spiders seemed to have mostly scattered from them, letting the girls feel a little less creeped out as they continued searching. Another room was checked and cleared, but then the girls came across a tunnel-hallway with several rooms set about and a distinct lack of spiderwebs.  
  
“Looks like the crawlers don’t come back here too much,” Ruby pointed out while holding another torch she’d gotten forward. The room she looked into had chairs with holes in the middle and buckets set under them, making her back up while she crinkled her nose. Blake began looking towards the darkest end with Yang right behind her while Weiss moved towards the opposite.  
  
To her surprise, a coffin was propped up against the far wall of a small room. At first, she thought it must have been where someone had died before the spiders took over, but then thought about the people who must have been in this cave beforehand. Not only did a coffin seem out of place for people avoiding the law, anyone using one would have set it down with the body inside, if not place it in the ground. Part of her was saying there was nothing in it, while another part told her they could have hidden items of value inside, believing no one would look in such a container. A small, but loud part of her also cried out in warning about investigating such an item in such a place.  
  
Slowly, Weiss walked up to the coffin, reaching out with one hand while holding her torch in the other. Her fingers touched the edge of the lid, pulling at it slightly and finding it loose enough to open. She took in a deep breath and pulled, slowly opening the container to the world and her eyes, her heart pounding and other arm tensed as its inside was slowly revealed.  
  
She sighed when she saw that nothing was inside, simply the cushioned lining typical of a coffin. She almost laughed at her childish fear of the simple object and turned to head back to her friends and continue searching, only to see a pale, sunken face behind her. Before she could react, the face’s mouth opened and came at her, sharp points piercing and sinking into her neck as it bit down.  
  
Weiss screamed.  
  


* * *

  
_August 9th - 9th of Last Seed_


	3. Blight of the Soul

Life is hectic. I know I'm not the only one, we're all going through some tough times right now, but I can at least claim that I was sliding into the rough times beforehand. Hopefully, everything gets better for all of us across the world. Stay safe, from [xTRESTWHOx](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/357862/), [NaanContributor](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/321209/), and me.  
  


* * *

  
Chapter 3: Blight of the Soul

* * *

  
_9th of Last Seed_   
  


* * *

* * *

  
Pain was firing through Weiss’ neck as she tried to shove the man – or perhaps simply man-shaped thing – off of her. It had taken hold of her arms, gripping them with almost unnatural strength, but she was beginning to pull her way free of them as her Aura was heightened with her struggle. She almost ripped herself free when a feeling of fatigue began to overcome her. Her energy felt as though it was slipping away as cold took her extremities and began to spread through her.  
  
“What the hell?!” Yang’s voice yelled before the thing’s face was pulled away from her throat. The thing tried to bat her away, but the brawler blocked and then punched it across the jaw. It shrieked as it leaped back, and then Weiss felt herself falter. Her team were yelling things to each other, at the creature, and to her, but she couldn’t focus on the words. Her head was swimming and spinning while she tried to gain her bearings, kneeling down to avoid falling from the dizziness. Her attacker looked back at her, but Blake jumped between them, bringing out her sword as she did. The creature drew a sword from a nearby rack as well, swinging it as soon as it was out of the scabbard. Blake slid back from the blow, then Yang came in. An audible punch hit the thing’s chest, breaking several ribs with a loud crack, and making it shout as it was flung back, but it punched back and hit Yang in the throat. The blonde was stunned by the strike, allowing the creature to kick her away and into the wall of the hallway with enough force to cause the cave itself to ominously shake.  
  
Between Yang’s injuries and the shaking cavern, Blake was distracted enough for the being to slash at her again, but she still blocked it, though it knocked her back. Ruby tried to jump in, but the small space prevented her from bringing her scythe to bear quickly. This gave the thing enough time to turn its attention towards her, grabbing at the shaft of her weapon and stabbing at her. Ruby was able to jump back in a burst of petals, to which the creature roared furiously and splayed its arms out wide. A glow began emanating from its palms and black blood began to stream out of its mouth. The blancette had mostly recovered by this point, though she still felt weak and cold. She had enough strength to recognize the opportunity presented to her, however, when she noticed the creature's unprotected back was facing towards her. As quickly as she could, she shot to her feet, drew Myrtenaster, and dashed towards the attacker with the assistance of a Glyph. She stabbed where she assumed the heart was and pierced all the way through, much to the surprise of herself, Ruby, and the creature itself, who seemed to look at the thin blade in shock.  
  
Then the thing shrieked in bloodcurdling agony as it clutched the place where the blade erupted from its chest and spasmed. Weiss stepped back before it fell to its knees, pulling her blade from it. The thing seemed to shrivel up before their eyes, soon crumbling into dust around the tattered clothing it wore.  
  
“Wha- what?” she asked no one in particular, clutching at the stinging spot on her neck a moment later. Weiss then stumbled and swayed, fatigue returning as the adrenaline wore off. As fast as they could, Blake was back on her feet and Yang was stumbling towards them, the former going through her pack and pulling out a medkit. Ruby, meanwhile, adopted a serious look on her face as she analyzed the pile of dust the creature left behind, her anger visibly restrained. Yang joined her soon after, both content with letting Blake tend to Weiss.  
  
“Here, you’re bleeding,” Blake said before taking alcohol pads and wiping them against the spots on Weiss’ neck. She hissed in a breath at the cool sting on her wounds, then let out a grunt of pain. Once the bleeding stopped, Blake looked over the punctures for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t know how deep those go, but that’s about all we can do for now. Let me find some gauze.”  
  
“What the heck was that thing?” Yang asked while shaking out her hair. “It hit like an Ursa, looked like a dried-up human, used a sword, and turned into dust?” She kicked at some of the dusty clothing, pushing a bit of the pile around to reveal an amulet of sorts. “Huh…?” As she fished it out, Ruby joined in on looking over Weiss.  
  
“You sure you okay? It didn’t poison you or anything?” Ruby asked with naked concern.  
  
“I’m fine. Just…a little cold, maybe.”  
  
Much to Weiss' surprise, Ruby responded by taking her hand into her own and holding it. Weiss tried to sputter out to ask what she was doing, then she brought it up to her cheek. Blake set the medkit aside and did the same with her other hand, confusing her further.  
  
“Yeah, you’re cold,” Ruby stated.  
  
“Was it…draining your blood?” Blake asked. “This feels almost like someone who donated blood recently.”  
  
“I don’t know… Maybe?”  
  
“How do you know what someone feels like just after donating?” Yang asked with genuine curiosity.  
  
“I used to donate all the time. Do you feel dizzy?” she directed back at Weiss.  
  
“Not as much as I did,” she admitted, not sure what to think of something having drained her of blood. “Mostly…tired.”  
  
“I’d say this whole thing is tiring.” Yang rolled her shoulders and neck as Blake pulled out a water bottle and mixed in an electrolyte packet. “Hitting that support beam sucked. A spider almost fell on me.”  
  
“Support beam?” Weiss stepped out and looked down to see a wooden beam nearly broken in half. The cave above it was spilling dirt, and the wood seemed to be breaking further. “Oh no.”  
  
Ruby looked down the cavern tunnel as well and gasped. “Hit the deck!”  
  
The girls went into the room and hugged a wall. Seconds later, the crashing of stone on stone was heard and a rush of air and dirt was sent past the opening of the room as the ground shook. When things began to settle, they all headed back out and looked down to see several boulders had caved in, including one that seemed to be bigger than any two of them put together.  
  
“Aw crap!” Yang complained. “Now we’ve got to dig out!”  
  
“Not a good idea,” Weiss warned her before walking up towards the cave in. “If we move too much of this, we could risk another, bigger cave-in. It wouldn’t be a problem with something to stabilize things, but all we have on hand that could do that is my Semblance, and that would be a temporary measure.”  
  
“Then what do we do?” Blake asked, looking to Ruby after a second.  
  
“Weiss knows more about caves and mining and stuff,” the youngest of them pointed out. “What do you think, Weiss?”  
  
The heiress smiled and looked back towards the darkness.  
  
“We should see if there’s any other way out. Sometimes, mines and caves, such as this one, have secondary exits in case of situations just like this. In fact, look at the settling dust.” She pointed towards the dust still in the air, illuminated by torchlight, flowing down to the ground at an angle. “There’s probably a slight draft in the direction of the exit.”  
  
“Okay, let’s see if we can find a way out,” Ruby agreed. The four of them continued down the tunnel, which seemed to wind its way around like a snake. With her natural night vision, Blake led them deeper into the cave, and after a few minutes of walking she turned her head around at a sound, and soon the other three heard it as well. It was a trickle, but it was unmistakably the sound of water flowing. At one turn, a slight stream of water flowed from slightly higher, cascading down the rock before pooling a bit at the bottom and then continued downhill with the next section of tunnel.  
  
“Is this a good sign?” Ruby hopefully asked.  
  
“It isn’t bad.” Blake squatted down to look at the place where the stream began. “Wherever this flows the water would have carved at the rock. It could lead outside to a creek or maybe a river, or it could lead to an underground reservoir.” She stood up and looked back down the tunnel. “We’ll just have to see.”  
  
They continued down further, a foul smell reaching their noses after a few minutes. They started cupping their faces or holding their noses against the stench, Ruby feeling a little nauseous from it. They began to pass by another cavern where flies were buzzing but stopped when they saw what was within. Piles and piles of bones lay inside, some picked clean while others were covered in fetid, rotted meat. Dotted among the bones were skulls of clearly human origin, along with a couple feline-shaped ones. At the top of the pile, though, were three ‘fresher’ bodies. One was heavily infested with maggots, slowly exposing the bone beneath to match the mass around them, another bloated disgustingly, looking like a balloon of filth in human-shape. The newest one looked as though he had just been added to the pile, a slight dry look to him and his neck missing a chunk.  
  
The girls ran away from the dumping ground, trying not to gag and hack as they fled the horrid scene. There were some near trip-ups, but they managed to stay on their feet and kept going, stumbling away from the rotting carcasses until they could no longer smell the stench of rot behind them.  
  
“Oh God! Oh God!” Yang got out as she tried to keep down her breakfast. “That was disgusting!”  
  
“How many people were in there?” Ruby asked as she looked back a moment.  
  
“I don’t know,” Weiss confessed. “There was no way to count. But it was-” She shivered at the memory of maggots crawling over teeth and through empty eye sockets. As she rubbed her arms, trying to keep out the thought of her almost succumbing to that same, horrible fate, she almost missed the sight of natural light up ahead. “Oh, thank the Gods! We’re almost out.”  
  
Everyone muttered their relief as they made their way out, stepping out of the cave into a bit of forest with nearby mountains. Weiss winced at the sunlight, rubbing her eyes a bit as a feeling of wooziness overcame her. Ruby was by her side in an instant, helping her to sit on a stone and keep her steady while Blake fished out the bottle of electrolyte water she had prepared. The heiress began to drink it down, shading her eyes while looking over everything.  
  
“Where are we?” she asked. Ruby looked around them, not sure herself, while Yang seemed to take a lookout position.  
  
“Not sure. Don’t worry. We’ll find our way back to Rorichstead.”  
  
“It’s Rorickstead,” Weiss corrected her with a mumble. She smacked her lips after taking a sip of the water and sighed. “Let’s just…move on.”  
  


* * *

  
Despite trying to find their way, the group was almost completely turned around by the exit area of the cave. They had managed to exit the forest and enter the plains area, which they knew Rorickstead was in. Following the road, however, didn’t return them to the village. In fact, it brought them to a whole new landmark, a sort of stone pillar somewhere between twenty and thirty meters tall, with five five-foot-tall stones arranged around it. An old, worn banner blew through the wind, attached near the top. It didn’t appear to be a ruin, so they guessed it was some sort of memorial or monument. The girls then set up camp against the stone outcropping nearby, as the sun was beginning to disappear in the distance. Weiss pored over the map as Yang tried to find a place to start a fire, trying to find out where they were.  
  
“I think we went the wrong way,” she concluded as the blonde started pushing large stones in a circle for a firepit. This caught the other girls’ attentions, letting her continue. “If we had been anywhere north of Rorickstead, we would have run into it by now. And I know for a fact that we went south.”  
  
“So, we need to go north?” Yang suggested as she set down another stone for a seat.  
  
“We could, but there’s no telling how far we are from Rorickstead,” Weiss explained while showing them the map. “The stretch below it is vaster than above it. We could be a full day away from Rorickstead now.”  
  
“What about here?” Ruby asked while pointing at another settlement.  
  
“Northkeep,” Weiss read, taking the map from Ruby and running her finger across it. “It could be closer or further, there’s just no way to tell. But…we would be able to orient ourselves better if we found it. We’d have to go through the mountain pass here, which would be clearly visible if the map’s even half-accurate.”  
  
“Plus, it’s civilization,” Yang added while rubbing her arms. “Not exactly looking forward to sleeping out in the cold tonight. Twice in a row would not be great.”  
  
“We could make that in a day, I believe.” Weiss looked over to Ruby. “Well, what do you say?”  
  
“Well…we’re not in any rush to get back to Solitude,” Ruby figured while rubbing her chin in thought. “We could see more of the area while getting our bearings. There may be even more opportunities there. We still aren’t sure how much what’s-his-name is going to give us for the amulet.”  
  
“Forget that, I wanna know what was up with that _thing_ ,” Yang griped. Weiss shivered as she rubbed her neck where the two punctures had faded. “Did he know that was in there?”  
  
“Maybe, maybe not.” Ruby groaned and crossed her arms. “Seemed kinda fishy, though. From that…one room, we can tell lots of people went in there and didn’t come out. We might have been the first ones he asked and everyone else went there for other reasons, or he kept asking people and no one was bringing back his amulet for reasons he didn’t know. Though, I doubt he would have tried _that_ many times…”  
  
“Whatever it was, we’ll get to the bottom of it,” Blake promised. She’d finally gotten the kindling started and was trying to get the fire to grow.  
  
“I just…wanna give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t seem…malicious.”  
  
“His face was reptilian. He wasn’t displaying much emotion at all,” The Faunus said as she put on another dry log piece and poked the fire with a green stick.  
  
“I can’t imagine he had any reason to send people to die to a monster,” Weiss spoke up. “The people of Rorickstead didn’t seem to know what was going on either, and they lived near it. I think it might have been using the spiders as a cover.”  
  
“Whatever it was,” Yang jumped in. “ _What_ was it? It definitely wasn’t a Grimm. Everything else aside, it turned to dust, not…empty air. Take into account it was using a weapon and wearing clothes…”  
  
“Some kind of body-possessing Grimm?” Ruby suggested. “Like a Geist for corpses?”  
  
“No, we would’ve seen it exit,” Weis pointed out. “Or there would’ve been some sign of it. I think…it was just a wholly new monster we’ve never seen before.”  
  
“Like those elf people, or the super Faunus,” Yang suggested.  
  
“Not Faunus,” Blake tersely mumbled.  
  
“I guess that makes sense,” Ruby acquiesced. “We have run into some alien creatures. Trolls are definitely not normal. Frostbite spiders too.”  
  
“If this place has giant cephalopods, I’m punching my way back to Remnant,” Yang promised with a tightened fist. The other girls laughed at that as the last vestige of the day sunk away.  
  


* * *

  
Weiss decided to take first watch. She was tired, but something about the night felt a little re-energizing to her. Most of her watch saw her staring up at the moons and reading the book the Dunmer had given her. She was beginning to regret not getting his name. She also regretted not getting a little verbal assistance with her first steps in trying to learn ‘magic’.  
  
Weiss was finding it increasingly harder and harder to sweep away the existence of 'magic'. She tried rationalizing magicka as Aura, but going further into it seemed to contradict the idea. Magicka was described as being a natural force, like light and gravity, suffused into the air, earth, and water. Even ignoring the ‘sun is a hole in the void of Oblivion leading to Aetherius’ nonsense, she had to admit they at least seemed to solidly explain how magicka came from the sun and the stars. The fact it was supposed to be a form of energy made sense, scientifically speaking. Everything needed an energy source. Even Aura depended on the state of the body as much as the soul.  
  
She was sure she was getting somewhere. Her hand felt hot. That was a good sign, right? She should be able to summon plumes of flame soon enough.  
  
For some reason, the idea of flames pouring from her hands didn’t seem so appealing now. Weiss reached up and brushed back some of her hair, feeling the sweat sticking to her bangs. She was then reminded of the bodily ache that had been slowly building through her.  
  
“Weiss, you good?” she heard Yang ask and looked back to see the girl was up on schedule.  
  
The heiress sighed. “To be honest, no. I feel dreadful.”  
  
“Yeah, you don’t look so hot.” Yang reached up and felt her forehead. “Correction, you are hot. Not good.” Yang shook her head and pointed over to their packs. “There’s some fever pills in the medkits. Go ahead and take a couple and get some sleep.”  
  
“Yeah, thanks.” Weiss closed the book and headed over to find the medicine, cursing the fact that she was coming down with something else already. She swallowed the fever reducers with a swig of water then headed to her sleeping bag.  
  


* * *

  
_It was dark and cold, and something was winding its way around her. She scrambled for purchase, trying to drag herself up and away from whatever it was. She kept ahead of it, but it was always there, looking down on her and laughing. No matter how fast she went, she couldn’t lose it, and she couldn’t get to her feet. Other voices laughed at her as well, enjoying the fear and torment she was experiencing. As they lapped it up, she cried out for someone, anyone to save her._   
  


* * *

  
“Weiss, you okay?” Ruby asked her partner after she sat with them to eat breakfast. She looked ill to anyone with eyes, and probably sounded like it to those who didn’t.  
  
“Didn’t sleep well,” she muttered, brushing off Ruby’s concern while drinking the almost detestable instant campfire coffee. “I think I’m coming down with something.”  
  
“Crap, do you think it’s some local disease?” Yang asked, her eyes slightly widened. “That might be what gets us: alien germs and our unprepared immune systems.” Ruby gasped at that before fire seemed to shine behind her silver eyes.  
  
“We better get to the town and get you some medicine!” she declared while hold her fist up in a determined look. “Let’s get ready ASAP! Weiss, don’t strain yourself!” Before the heiress could tell Ruby not to be overly worried, the younger girl quickly scarfed down the remainder of her food and set to packing. Yang and Blake went after her, leaving Weiss to finish her breakfast practically alone. She sighed good-naturedly and shook her head before focusing on finishing her food. Once she was done, she started packing as well. There wasn’t much at that point, but she didn’t want to feel like a burden. Intrinsically, she knew they wouldn’t see it that way, but there was her personal peace of mind to worry over as well.  
  
Soon, they set off, heading south towards a place they hoped would point them in the right direction.  
  


* * *

  
The girls arrived at Northkeep just as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. A few hours before, they had passed between the mountains the map showed just after hitting a four-way crossing in the road. Weiss, luckily, kept them on track when Ruby almost led them to the east-bound road. Keep Inn had some vacancies, and they managed to get a room just before the shops closed, with Ruby rushing out to the apothecary, the place most likely to have medicine.  
  
Storm clouds rolled over, having been distant when they were on the approach, and now they were pouring rain down in buckets, letting the girls know they had narrowly dodged a bullet there. Ruby returned in the thick of it, her hood pulled up to help keep herself from getting soaked. She then brought out a bottle and sighed sadly.  
  
“This was all we could afford,” she said sadly while handing the bottle over to Weiss, who looked it over curiously. “She called it a ‘low-grade disease treatment’ potion. Supposed to help fight off infections, but if we wanted anything more specific, we’d have to know the name of the disease or let her figure it out. But it wouldn’t matter, because I asked how much ‘cure’ potions are, and the cheapest one is eighty septims.” She sighed as she sat down at their table. “And I doubt it’s Witless Pox.”  
  
“Someone having money troubles?” the dark-skinned bartender asked them. The four turned to her and she gave them a light smile. “We’ve all been there. Maybe I could give you a hand?”  
  
Weiss’ face became a little pensive and the others looked uncertain. Suddenly accepting charity wasn’t automatically bad, but to do it when they weren’t actually desperate was another thing. Ruby was sure any one of them could go out and make a bit of money if someone was willing to pay them for work. From the look on the innkeeper's face, she clearly understood their concerns.  
  
“Oh, don’t worry,” she reassured them with a wave of her hand. “It’s not a handout. I just need someone to deliver something for me to the inn at Helgen.” She pulled up a small crate that rattled a bit on the inside, the chinking of glass heard from within.  
  
Weiss hummed with uncertainty while checking their map. She saw Helgen labelled to the east of them. “That’s…a day away if we leave first thing in the morning.” A roll of thunder passed over them, letting them know the likelihood of that.  
  
“Well, I can promise you a whole denar if you make the trip.”  
  
Weiss’ eyes went wide at that while Ruby gained a thoughtful look.  
  
“How much is a denar?” she asked, and her partner leaned over.  
  
“One hundred septims,” Weiss whispered.  
  
“Oh, wow, uh…” Ruby took on a more thoughtful look before turning to her team. Blake and Yang both looked at Weiss, who still looked as if she was falling ill. For her part, Weiss was trying to resist the urge to haggle. She already knew this was charity disguised as a simple task, and pushing it when her well-being was on the line was not wise.  
  
“Okay,” the younger girl finally agreed. “We’ll head over with it as soon as we can.”  
  
“Good deal. Vilod will give you what you’re owed, just tell him it’s from Nania. Here, I’ll write up a note and leave it in the bottles for him to find.” The woman then took a sheet of paper from a box along with a quill and inkwell. She quickly wrote up a message for her fellow inn keeper as a man a few shades darker than her walked up.  
  
“Giving these girls some work, dear?”  
  
“They need a little more than what we can give them for chopping wood, Alusan.” They looked towards one of their windows being pattered by hard rain and both shared a smile. “Of course, no one’s chopping wood now.”  
  
The man smiled at his wife as she set a denar on the dried note and folded it over the coin out of sight of the girls before setting it into the crate. The girls had an honest look about them that she felt she could trust. Despite their manner of dress, she could tell they were in a bad way. She didn’t know the situation, but she had been at the business of innkeeping and bartending long enough to tell when someone needed a hand. She just hoped the situation with their sick member wasn’t too dire. If nothing else, they’d get to Helgen and a priest would see to her, or they’d manage to get the right potion. Most diseases took a long time to become deadly, anyway, and the sick girl’s condition didn’t seem too bad yet. She should be right as rain in no time.  
  


* * *

  
_It was dark and cold, and something was winding its way around her. She scrambled for purchase, trying to drag herself up and away from whatever it was. She kept ahead of it, but it was always there, looking down on her and laughing. No matter how fast she went, she couldn’t lose it, and she couldn’t get to her feet. Other voices laughed at her as well, enjoying the fear and torment she was experiencing. As they lapped it up, she cried out for someone, anyone to save her.  
  
No answer came, but instead the winding of digits and limbs were felt around her legs, dragging her back and into the cold. Slivers of something like creeping ice worked its way up her back, sinking into her skin with its unwanted embrace. The cold hands held her arms now, and she was screaming._   
  


* * *

  
Team RWBY waited for the rain to let up, which took close to noon, before heading out to Helgen. As they hit the road, Ruby looked over their map before handing it over to Blake. Northkeep was a rather small settlement, tightly packed into a wall that once served as a fort, so it didn’t take them long to exit and leave it behind.  
  
“We may have to camp out at night, but luckily I’ve got a waterproof tent,” Ruby told them. “You were right about being prepared, Weiss.”  
  
“Even I couldn’t have predicted this,” she grumbled, trying not to sound irate. The sun felt more blinding than normal to her, but luckily the storm was hiding it behind cloud cover half the time. She didn’t really get to enjoy it, however, and instead was plagued by the constant fatigue and soreness flowing through her, not to mention the fever. Ruby had half-suggested that Weiss wait at Northkeep, but the heiress quickly talked her into letting her come, citing that if the treatment was in Helgen, then it would be more prudent for her to go there rather than wait on the others to make a round trip. More selfishly, she just wanted it to end as soon as possible, and if there was some form of “instant cure” that people seemed to profess existed for most diseases, then she wanted it the moment it was available.  
  
“We’re kinda unprepared for all of this,” Yang admitted while putting her arms behind her head. “Big, mountainous land with monsters around every corner, medieval North Anima looking guys, walking reptiles, and variable cat people. Like a fantasy board game. All we need now is a dragon.”  
  
“Well, none of us are bards, so we’d have to fight it,” Blake responded, smirking a little at the implied joke.  
  
“Eh, my charisma score’s high enough. I could pull it off.”  
  
Ruby started to make a sound of disgust, but it quickly morphed into laughter. Weiss look at them all in confusion.  
  
“I don’t get it,” the blancette confessed.  
  
“It’s a rolling joke,” Yang said.  
  
“That explains nothing.”  
  
“Remind me to get a session of Cairns and Chimeras started when we get back,” Yang said to her sister. “We need to give Weiss a crash course.”  
  
“Hopefully it turns out better than Remnant: the Game,” the team leader responded with a chuckle.  
  
“She purposefully confused me with that one!” Weiss accused while pointing towards the blonde. Yang defended herself, and the girls entered a short back and forth that was more playful than anything. As they rested for a short break, eating some tuna sandwiches that Blake threw together for them all, the cat-eared Faunus started looking around, her bow moving with the twitches of her ears. The others turned in the direction she was looking, and everyone tensed when she grabbed her weapons.  
  
“What’s up?” Ruby whispered to her as she readied Crescent Rose, a finger twitch away from deploying the scythe.  
  
“Something’s stalking towards us,” she warned them. They followed her gaze and, for a moment, didn’t see anything. However, they could all soon make out the details of a brown coat of fur approaching. Whatever it was noticed their alert stances and paused, then it rushed forward in a burst of movement and leaped the last twenty or so feet through the air. Yang’s fist came around and knocked it away with a crunch, a snarling yelp coming from the creature, now revealed to be a feline with exposed incisors the size of small knives.  
  
“The hell?!” she exclaimed before turning back to see three more incoming, though they stopped and began circling the four girls. One came near where its fellow had landed and sniffed at the downed cat. It then growled before letting out a sound between a cat’s meow and a roar, then they all fled. The girls remained alert for a moment before Blake went over to the dead one and checked over it, the others moving around to look at the corpse from all angles  
  
“I think you caved its chest in,” she relayed to her partner. “The others must have thought twice when that one saw it was dead.”  
  
“I don’t believe this,” Weiss muttered while looking closely at the limp mouth of the dead feline. “Homotherium crenatidens.”  
  
“Gesundheit,” Ruby told her, but Weiss shook her head.  
  
“It’s a saber-toothed cat,” Weiss explained. “These things have been extinct on Remnant for ten thousand years.”  
  
“I thought the saber-toothed cats were smiledons,” Yang commented, remembering her faint studies on Remnant's natural history.  
  
“Those are the most famous, but there were several species. These were less well-known as they had smaller fangs, but still bigger than anything you’d find on an extant feline species on Remnant.” Weiss prodded at the gums with a stick. “Why is this here, on an alien world?”  
  
“I think we’ll hurt ourselves thinking about it,” Blake told her before standing up straight. “At least, those three won’t come after us again. They’re animals, but they aren’t stupid. Still, we shouldn’t stick around here. Let’s move on.”  
  
“Right,” Ruby agreed before looking at the carcass. “Should we leave it here?”  
  
“It probably wouldn’t be any good for eating,” the Faunus explained before rubbing her chin. “But maybe the fur can get us a little money. Okay, I can skin it if we take a moment.”  
  


* * *

  
With a new pelt added to their inventory, Team RWBY continued along the road. Night started falling as they reached the point where the lake emptied itself into a river, camping near the rockface after deciding to not tempt the world to show them if it had lake monsters. It turned out the world was going to show them anyways with a couple of crabs larger than the sisters’ dog. They were easily killed, but one had made a rip in a sleeping bag, which earned it a kick from Yang that split it in half.  
  
“Stupid crabs,” the blonde complained as Ruby sewed a patch in Yang’s bag. While she was ripping the legs and claws off for food, the brawler was unable to hide the vindictiveness she felt in tearing the critters apart. Blake readied a pot with purified water and got out some butter from their stored food.  
  
“Knew I wasn’t overpacking.”  
  
“The crabbing industry must be a lot more dangerous here than we’d have thought,” Ruby said before shaking out the fixed sleeping bag and handing it over to her sister. She then looked over to her sick friend and grimaced. “Hey Weiss, are you okay? You need anything?”  
  
“Water,” the heiress got out between winces of pain and discomfort. Parts of her felt as though they were being twisted and set on fire. While the sun’s sinking away provided a modicum of relief, they couldn’t let her get cold and so bundled her up. Her condition seemed to have deteriorated rapidly in just a couple of hours, and now Ruby was making plans to get her treatment at Helgen even if she had to ‘borrow’ it first and worry about paying back for it later. The leader returned with a drinking canteen and helped Weiss to get a few swallows down.  
  
“Don’t worry about taking a turn at watch tonight,” Ruby assured her. “Well split it between the three of us. You just get some rest.”  
  
Weiss looked at her for a moment, wincing with pain as tears came unbidden. “Thank you,” she got out.  
  
“Don’t mention it,” Ruby told her while gently patting her arm. “Just lay down and relax. Let us know if you think you can eat anything.” At Weiss’ nod, Ruby went back to helping set up camp. The sick woman watched her leave and wiggled in her bundle of covers, trying to get as comfortable as she could, even as aches and fever plagued her.  
  


* * *

  
_It was dark and cold, and something was winding its way around her. She scrambled for purchase, trying to drag herself up and away from whatever it was. She kept ahead of it, but it was always there, looking down on her and laughing. No matter how fast she went, she couldn’t lose it, and she couldn’t get to her feet. Other voices laughed at her as well, enjoying the fear and torment she was experiencing. As they lapped it up, she cried out for someone, anyone to save her.  
  
No answer came, but instead the winding of digits and limbs were felt around her legs, dragging her back and into the cold. Slivers of something like creeping ice worked its way up her back, sinking into her skin with its unwanted embrace. The cold hands held her arms now, and she was screaming.  
  
She was lifted up, her struggles seemingly only serving to excite the limbs holding her in place, and her eyes beheld a pair of glowing, cold points of light. A smile stretched beneath them, teeth like needles the size of a man in mismatched rows revealed before her. A massive finger stretched out before her and came down, a gnarled claw coming for her face. She struggled and screamed, but could do nothing to move out of its path.  
  
The tip of the claw touched her forehead, blood leaking down her face from the point of contact. A laugh like grating stone and billowing flames rang out around her.  
  
“You’re mine now, my child.”_   
  


* * *

  
  
Weiss’ body shook as she awoke for a brief moment. She tried to get up but felt restricted by the blankets wrapped around her as well as her own weakness. Her heart raced faster and faster and images of demonic faces flashed across her eyes. She tried to scream, but the sound wouldn’t come to her. As her friends noticed her thrashing, she went still as her throat seemed to lock up. No breath reached her as her eyes fluttered close and she rattled, her body finally going still as her heart stopped.


	4. Chapter 4

Well, things are starting to come together for me. Hoping I can pull off these last bits. But for right now, with the help of [xTRESTWHOx](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/357862/) and [NaanContributor](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/321209/) I give you another rewritten chapter

* * *

  
Chapter 4: To Consume the World

* * *

  
_12th/13th of Last Seed_

* * *

* * *

  
“Weiss! Weiss!” Ruby shouted as she unburied her friend from what she had wanted to be a blanket burrito of comfort. When she finally had the heiress free, Weiss gasped in a breath and her arms shot up, clenching onto the first thing they felt, those being Ruby’s left forearm and right wrist.

“Weiss!” Ruby said with relief filling her voice. “You scared us for a second there.”

“I think you might have had a seizure,” Blake said while dabbing her forehead with a wet cloth. “Gods, this is more serious than I thought.”

“Any idea what to do when someone’s having seizures?” Yang asked her partner. “I’ve heard jokes about putting a shoe in someone’s mouth to keep them from biting off their tongue, but I don’t want to go off of faulty info here.”

Weiss didn't respond, instead shooting her gaze in every direction she could. Her throat felt so dry and she wanted nothing more than to drink something, and at the same time her grip on Ruby's wrists tightened.

“Ow, ow, ow!” Ruby started saying. “Weiss, ow! Weiss, you’re hurting me!”

Weiss seemed to snap out of whatever daze she was in with a small gasp and snatched her hands away from her leader. “I… I’m sorry,” she got out, rubbing her head while thinking over what had just happened. “I thought… I thought I was… I thought I was dead for a moment there.”

“Weiss, no!” Ruby protested while hugging her friend close. Weiss went stiff for a moment then loosened up the tension in her as she accepted the embrace. Something seemed to push her to nuzzle her face against Ruby’s shoulder and then turn towards her neck. An errant thought reached her mind, but she forced it down before pulling up and holding Ruby’s arm more gently as their eyes met.

“It’s okay. I think it passed. I…don’t feel better, but I don’t feel as bad as I did. I’ll just…go back to sleep.”

The team leader still had worry on her face, but acquiesced as she let her friend go and stepped back. “Okay. I’ll be here for a minute, so don’t worry.”

Weiss laughed dryly while shaking her head. “Be sure to get some rest yourself.”

“I will, but you first.”

“All right.” Weiss laid back down. She still felt awful, but she was sure the worst of it had passed. _Something_ felt better, though she couldn’t put her finger on it. She did her best not to linger on it, clearing her head as much as she could as she tried to fall into sleep once again.

The nightmares still came.

* * *

  
Morning came, and soon the girls were back on the road. Unbeknownst to Weiss, the other three had constructed a sledge using some branches, two long ones for the runners and five shorter ones tied atop them, with branches, leaves, and the saber-toothed cat’s pelt functioning as a cushion for the basket. Despite all her arguments, the other three made her lie atop it and be pulled by the others. Mostly Yang pulled it along, but the other two had enough strength for it as well, so they planned to take turns.

“Honestly, this is ridiculous,” Weiss complained again. “I’m fine. Much better than yesterday by any measure,” she told them.

“Weiss, for all we know, you had a heart attack last night, if not a seizure,” Yang called back to her as she dragged the sledge along. “I’m not a medical expert, but I’d say that’s a pretty big sign that you need to stay off of your feet at the minimum.”

“Yang’s right, Weiss,” Ruby said to her partner as she slowed just enough to walk next to her. “We still don’t know what you’ve caught or what it might do. You could relapse if you strain yourself, and it could be even worse. We can’t risk that.”

Weiss sighed, knowing they had a point. Still, she hated feeling helpless, like a dainty maiden in need of rescuing.

“Fine. I hate this, but I understand. Can I at least have another drink?”

“You’ve only got to put up with it for a little while,” Blake told Weiss while handing her a water bottle. “We get to Helgen, figure this out, and then we’ll know if you’re clear to move around.”

"Yay..." Weiss droned, taking a large swig of water before capping it. One thing she had noticed, as had the others, was that she had suddenly become unbearably thirsty. She had gone through almost two water bottles already, and there was no sign that thirst was letting up anytime soon.

The Faunus then looked over and raised her eyebrows. The others followed her gaze and saw what she was looking at. Three stones stood on a flat, stone platform, each with a carving on them and a near-perfect hole at the top. Ruby hopped up to the structure and looked it over before taking a picture and then dashing back to her friends.

“This is so cool!” she exclaimed as she showed them, letting them see the carvings up close.

“Looks like a barbarian, a rogue, and a wizard,” Yang listed off before the scroll was tilted to give Weiss a better view. The blancette hummed and took out her map, noting the small drawings where they should be near.

“Guardian Stones,” she told them while tracing the roads with her fingers. “We should head south, and that will take us to Helgen.” She looked back at the carving and smiled. “Quite remarkable, aren’t they?”

“Professor Oobleck would have a field day with this place,” Yang commented before hoisting the rope over her shoulder and beginning to take off again.

“You mean Doctor?” Ruby teased.

“Whoops,” the blonde responded, completely sardonic towards the pointed-out slipup. They all laughed a little at the in-joke as they continued on. Most of their traveling went without incident. At some point, a roll of thunder passed over them from the direction of the nearby massive mountain, but they paid it little mind except to make sure the tent was within an easily accessible place. Hours ticked on by, dotted by a few more distant thunderous sounds that were sounding less and less like thunder and more like something screaming foreign obscenities while simultaneously roaring. The landscape slowly shifted as well. They steadily climbed uphill, reaching a higher elevation that allowed more snow to stick to the ground for longer, until they were seeing white in almost every direction close to noon. Spots of it looked iced over, letting them know that the rain from the other day likely landed atop the settled powder.

As they cleared a patch of piney forest, the town could be seen ahead, as well as the column of smoke rising from its center. A distant sound like crowds screaming reached them, and the girls paused in their steps. Black wings seemed to unfurl from within the smoke a moment later, and then an unmistakable roar sounded out, drowning out the screams they thought they heard. Weiss instantly jumped to her feet as the other three readied their weapons, grabbing her rapier a moment later.

“Ruby?” Yang said, looking to her sister and team leader for guidance.

“It’s attacking the town! We’ve got to stop it!” she said before dashing forward, the others following after her, their honed battle instincts rising to the fore. Ruby was the first to jump over the gate, using her rifle’s recoil to clear it. Yang followed her lead, with Blake leaping up towards the wall, finding a foothold, and further jumping up from there. Weiss set a glyph down and had it launch her into the air, another appearing just below the arc of her flight to catch her softly and let her jump down two more to join her team. The town’s buildings were all set aflame or reduced to rubble. Blackened corpses dotted the sides of the streets, letting them know that this enemy used something heat-based to kill. Said enemy was partly hidden behind smoke and dust, but the obscuring cloud soon cleared enough that they could begin making it out.

It was massive, larger than even the Giant Nevermore RWBY had fought during their initiation, but it held itself with a predator’s grace. It was covered in black scales, that, unlike Grimm skin, seemed to gleam with dark light. Its eyes were a baleful red and orange, but they were not mindless orbs. Intelligence lurked amongst the rage as it snarled as them, a breath leaving its nostrils before a corpse fell from its jaws. Bloodied and burnt, the person had been pierced, crushed, and charred. It wasn’t certain which brought their death, but the wing of the not-Grimm creature before them slammed onto the body, further erasing their existence.

**“Meyye…”** the creature muttered, catching the Huntresses-in-training completely off guard. Monsters didn’t speak. Grimm _certainly_ did not speak. **“Mey jorre. Hi lost bo dir.”**

“Oh…my…” Yang got out before the _dragon_ moved, standing upon his legs and then flapping his massive wings. It almost felt like hurricane winds were buffeting them before it rose up into the air, gaining altitude and then moving forward before banking hard. The four looked back at where it had gone and saw it approaching fast. The dragon’s lungs seemed to fill with air, and Ruby’s eyes went wide at the implication.

“Split!” she called out before diving one way. The others did the same, just in time to avoid a stream of fire and heat that turned stone red and lit up any wood already not burning. She quickly reached into her pouches and produced her specialty ammo. It was expensive stuff she commissioned specifically as an answer to things like the Ancient Deathstalker’s carapace. Probably the hardest hitting bullets she could use without taking chunks of her own Aura from the recoil, even while using all the safeties she had built into Crescent Rose. She loaded the cartridge and chambered the first round before taking aim at the dragon, which had already turned back around for another run. She fired off a few shots, aiming for the spiked head, and saw the bullets spark off its hide like they were BBs hitting steel. She balked for a moment before being forced to dodge another blast of flame.

“It’s bullet-proof!” she called out in warning to the others. Then a rumbling sounded out from above like…a laugh. The dragon was laughing at them!

“Cocky bastard!” Yang cursed as she took a stance. Mini-missiles launched themselves from her gauntlets as the dragon came close to her, hitting its wings. She cheered as that got it to pause mid-air and look at its limbs in worry, but then it glared down at the blonde with rage and instantly unleashed a fire breath upon her. Yang held her arms over her head, but after it washed over her, she was none the worse for wear.

“You’ve got to do better than that!” she taunted the beast. “Come down here and try it!”

In response the dragon growled and raised its head as it took another breath, only this time what came out was cold, white winds. Yang gasped before she was struck head-on, caught under the freezing torrent for several seconds. When it ceased, she was nearly frozen in place, some ice having even formed on her. The dragon made a sudden dive, its jaws aiming at the frozen girl.

“No!” Ruby screamed as she launched herself forward, her Semblance firing her toward her sister. She crashed into the blonde and yanked her out of the way, the two feeling the air displacement of the maw snapping shut where she’d been milliseconds before. They hit dirt and rolled into the doorway of a nearly collapsed building, both a little dazed and Yang slightly shivering. The dragon tried to turn back to them, but was distracted by small shots bouncing off its belly. Blake had gotten atop a building that was mostly whole and ran toward the creature, firing a few times before throwing her variant ballistic chain scythe and making it wrap around a talon. She pulled herself up, aiming to get atop the dragon, but it launched itself upwards and turned, smacking her out of the air and through another house on its last legs. She groaned as she picked herself up, the building she’d gone through collapsing behind her.

The dragon seemed to be deciding which of them to go after when Weiss went out and summoned a large glyph and poured an extra amount of Ice Dust into it. Spikes and spears of ice all flew at the dragon, many shattering against its hide, but some seemed to melt on contact before refreezing. Thanks to a slight application of Burn Dust, combined with a delaying effect through a small Lightning Dust-fueled time glyph, also applied to a bit of Ice Dust, she was able to make ‘sticky’ icicles. It was something she and Ruby worked on as a theory, but never had much time to practice. Part of the dragon was now covered in thick ice, forcing it to glide awkwardly away as it bit and clawed to free itself. Weiss instantly went to help Blake up to her feet while the sisters headed towards them, Yang scooping up Gambol Shroud as they did.

“We have to get out of here!” Weiss told them. “We can’t even dent this thing, and I bet I only made it angry!”

“Damn thing wouldn’t last if he landed,” Yang griped as Blake took her blade back.

“We can’t just head out,” Ruby realized. “It’ll probably follow us, and it’s fast enough to keep up with us at our fastest.”

“What do we do?”

Ruby looked around the ruined town, her gaze coming back to the stone structure nearby. It looked to be in one piece, though she wasn’t sure if that was because the dragon couldn’t damage it much or just hadn’t started on it. Still, she could see a door that was partially ajar and the beginnings of the room within.

“Head to the fort!” she ordered. “Double-time!”

Without question, the girls obeyed, chasing after their leader as they did. At the same time, the dragon had risen back into the air, looking at their running forms with wrath. It crushed the block of ice in its jaws and roared before heading straight for them. Ruby reached the door first, throwing it wide open with her entry before turning and loading a new cartridge into Crescent Rose. She fired, and ice sprouted on the dragon’s face where her bullet hit. It shook its head, but only seemed all the madder at her defiance. Weiss came in next, followed closely by Blake, then Yang, and Ruby continued to unload her Ice Dust shots onto their seemingly invincible foe. The door was slammed shut by Yang and the girls ran as far into the room as they could. The stones shook but held against the beast. A roar was heard as the iron door slowly turned red from obvious heat, smoke leaking through the cracks, but still, it all held. The girls were relieved, but for safety’s sake, they decided to keep heading deeper in.

“What the hell…was that?” Yang muttered, hunched over and resting her hands on her knees after finally getting a moment to catch her breath and think over what they’d just faced.

“They have dragons here. Actual dragons,” Ruby said softly. “Way tougher than any Grimm we ever fought, and they talk.”

“More like shouted, if you asked me.” Blake winced and pulled a piece of charred wood out of her hair. “But now what do we do?”

The building seemed to shake when she asked that, dislodging dirt and knocking over loose items. They could hear another roar, although this one sounded less angry, somehow.

“We can’t go out right now,” Ruby determined from that. “We’ll have to wait it out or…see if there’s another exit. Let’s search the place and see what we can find. Other people might have holed up deeper inside.”

For a second, Blake thought about bringing up the possibility that no one else made it out, but held it down. If people were close to the fort, they could have headed in for safety, and it seemed like the dragon either couldn’t or didn’t want to bother breaking into the structure. She hoped it was the former, because the latter meant that the only thing standing between them and death was the dragon’s whim.

They started heading in, stalled for a moment by a collapsed portion of roof that fed their fears of the place not being able to hold out indefinitely. The door to their left seemed to invite them in, so they entered to find that it was something of a storage room and kitchen. Yang decided to open a barrel out of curiosity and laughed as she picked up a potato. “We won’t starve, at least.”

“Yang, that’s not yours,” Ruby quietly admonished her.

“Ruby, I appreciate your positive and lawful moral code, but I highly doubt anyone’s coming back here for potatoes.”

They heard rustling and looked over to see Weiss rummaging through a crate, pulling out several flasks of red liquid. _Healing potions_ was inscribed on the side of the crate, letting them deduce what the concoctions were. She looked back to see her teammates’ glares and shrugged.

“Like Yang said, people aren’t coming back here for these. Besides, we can put them to use.” She began packing them away, smiling as another thought came. “Also, if we come across any other survivors, medicine will be one of the things they need the most.”

Ruby sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Okay, grab anything useful, but let’s not linger. We don’t want to be anywhere near here if the dragon decides to come back.”

“No, we do not,” Weiss agreed as she continued carefully packing the potions away. Yang just hummed and looked at the barrel of potatoes before scooping up a few and dropping them into her own pack of supplies. Weiss paused after filling up her sack, looking at the remaining potions. Her throat begged to be quenched and the red color was oddly inviting. Figuring it wouldn’t hurt, she popped the cork off one and drank it down, smacking her lips at the odd taste. Disappointingly, she still felt thirsty.

During all of this, Blake had scouted ahead for them and came back looking a little off-kilter.

“Okay, good news and… I’m not sure how to say it.”

“What’s up?” Ruby asked her, concern evident in her voice.

“Bodies,” the Faunus simply said. The girls stiffened for a moment, but gathered themselves. They’d already seen the corpses on the way inside, but outside there hadn’t been time to really take it in. With their thoughts back to that, the weight of innocent deaths tried to settle onto them.

“We’ll…be okay. Are there… Was anyone alive?”

Blake sadly shook her head. “I checked all the ones that might have been. All of them up to the stairs are gone.” Ruby was disappointed to hear that, but there was nothing for it. The four set out, coming upon the bodies in short order. The first they came across was of a man in blue right next to a table, lying in a pool of blood with his neck and chest cut open, an iron axe next to him. Unable to do anything for the departed man, the girls continued forward. Past a doorway, there were more bodies, three in blue, two in red and leather, and a green-skinned civilian with tusks clutching a battle-axe.

“An Orsimer,” Weiss said as she looked him over, gulping at the sight of more blood. Her thirst was making her _think_ about _maybe_ drinking it so that- She shook her head to banish the thoughts. She quickly took her canteen and swallowed some water, making her flinch at the feeling of her belly holding _way_ too much liquid. “Looks like a blow to the head. One of the blue men had a mace.”

Ruby lifted up an iron mace and looked it over before setting it back down, sighing as she noticed the bloodstain on its end. The blue armored man closest to it looked like his head had been chopped halfway off.

“Mutual deathblow?” Yang guessed.

“Why were they fighting?” Ruby asked, confused, concerned, and angry as to why people would be killing each other when a dragon was loose and killing people itself.

“I don’t know,” Weiss admitted. “I heard rumors of a civil war, but it was supposed to be… No, we’re much closer to the eastern side of Skyrim now.” Weiss pondered for a moment. “They might’ve been fighting, and that attracted the dragon.”

As they continued further into the keep, they found even more evidence to support Weiss’ theory of the nearby war being the cause. The next room had another body, an Imperial woman clad in steel armor similarly shaped to the leather armors of the other soldiers and a red cape with a stylized dragon with its wings in a diamond shape for a sigil, just like some of the banners back in Solitude. The woman had died clutching her bleeding side, though it didn’t look like a battle wound. More likely she had been injured by the dragon’s attack in some way, but only made it this far. On the ground before her was a helmet with a crest, in between her hands.

Stairs led them down deeper into the fort and into some sort of prison. There were a number of cages, gibbets, and several sorts of restraints. In the center cage lied a body, unmoving. Spread across a table were a number of tools and devices that looked designed to cause pain.

“Torture,” Blake sneered, immediately recognizing the type of room they were in.

“How barbaric,” Weiss added, disgusted as she glanced at the body of an old man. Based off the wounds he sported, it appeared that as the survivors fled deeper into the keep, desperately trying to escape the dragon, the old man was trampled in the ensuing stampede. His uniform was similar enough to the soldiers’ that it could be seen that he was part of the same organization, but the tools falling from his pockets and held in his hand let her know that he was the one who worked in this dreadful place.

“What’s this?” Ruby questioned, holding a book with another dragon insignia. “ _The Book of the Dragonborn._ What’s a Dragonborn?” Deciding it was a question for later, Ruby pocketed the book and joined with the others, preparing to move deeper along, until a faint sound came from the center cage. Turning around, the girls saw the previously unmoving man struggling in an attempt to get up.

“Wa-” he moaned. “Wat-”

“Hold on,” Ruby called out to him as she took out her canteen and unscrewed the lid. She gently tipped it forward into the man’s dry lips. He gasped after taking a swallow and she gave him a little more. After five gulps, he took a moment to breathe and looked at them all.

“Not Imperials,” he said. “Not rebels. Who are you?”

“We’re…Huntresses,” Ruby said, figuring it didn’t matter what he thought they were or what they were doing. At the same time, Weiss pulled out a healing potion and handed it to him. He threw it back and sighed as he seemed further restored. The girls blinked in amazement at the speed the medicine worked.

“Fine clothing for simple woodsfolk,” he said as he sat up and grunted. “Ah, who am I to question the persons that saved my life?” Yellow light seemed to flow over him for a moment as he held his hands out, his palms appearing to be the source. He sighed and stood up, amazingly back at full strength now. “My name’s Cynrrbert Veldrine. I’m a traveling mage. Just an honest man that got accused of forgery, among other crimes. Likely the damned… Never mind it for now. Suffice to say the Head Torturer decided he was going to starve and dry me to get me to tell them about contacts I don’t even have. Then, next thing I know, half the town is coming through here, screaming about a dragon, Imperial soldiers and Stormcloaks _not_ killing each other as they ran. They didn’t even bother looking for the key to get me out. Just…left me to die.”

“Well, they were running from a dragon,” Yang said. “We tried to take it down, but…nothing gets through that armor.”

“A… There really was a dragon? That’s…” He scratched at his head, seemingly confused.

“It was awful,” Ruby told him. “It was big and black and tried to kill us!”

“You have to forgive me a bit, but…no one’s seen a dragon in…thousands of years, I think. I’ve seen some bones. The jarl of Whiterun has the skull of a dragon mounted upon his wall from his long-ago predecessor. Maybe… Perhaps it migrated from across the ocean. There may yet be more dragons in Akavir.”

“So, this dragon caught everyone off guard, and it’s been so long that no one could remember how to hurt it?” Weiss asked.

“Maybe a few elves. Very few, but it’s possible. The Blades might have, but they’ve been disbanded. Better that the people in charge are told. If the townsfolk make it, word might spread, but I don’t know if this dragon would stick around until… Never mind for now. Let’s focus on getting ourselves out of here first. Um, mostly me.”

“Sure, uh, one second,” Ruby said before she looked around, wondering where a key might be.

“I didn’t find a key,” Blake said as she came from an adjoined room. “But I found a lockpicking set. Been a while since I used one.”

The Faunus took out a small, slender piece of metal and a tension wrench. She gingerly placed the two items into the lock on the cage and began to slowly fiddle with it while listening. After about half a minute, the lock came loose. Cynrrbert sighed in relief as he stepped out of the cramped cage.

“Thank you. I owe you all my life. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to put something solid in my stomach before we move on.”

Yang reached into her sack and pulled out a recent acquisition. “Potato?” she offered with a grin.

* * *

  
“So, can you explain to me this ‘civil war’ that’s going on?” Weiss asked as they moved deeper into the keep, following after the survivors’ trail.

“It all has to do with the White-Gold Concordat,” Cynrrberrt explained. “About thirty or so years ago, the Aldmeri Dominion, led by the Thalmor, invaded the Empire, which was, and still is, weak from various calamities that befell it since the dawn of the Fourth Era. It lasted for about five years, with the Thalmor managing to reach and sack the Imperial City before finally getting repelled. A lot of lives were lost, and many cities and towns were ruined. Rather than continue fighting, Emperor Titus Mede II signed a peace treaty, the Concordat, with the Aldmeri Dominion, which ended the conflict. Among its provisions, it ceded the southern coast of Hammerfell and banned the worship of Talos in the Empire.”

“Banning the worship of a god? That’s…horrible!” Weiss gasped, echoing the others’ thoughts. They themselves might not know or worship this ‘Talos’, but they knew all too well the importance of freedom of religion. Trying to restrict it only caused friction. Sure, there needed to be rules about what one could do even when following a religion, but it was generally a ‘your right to swing your fist ends where others’ noses begin’ sort of thing. The last time there had ever been a total ban on any religion was in Mantle during the Great War.

“Indeed, but it wasn’t really enforced until Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm, made a big fuss about it. Before, everyone basically ignored the provision and had their little shrine to Talos if they wanted. But, when the Forsworn, native Reachmen cultists living in the Reach, took over Markarth during the Forsworn Uprising shortly after the war ended, and the Empire couldn’t get them out, Ulfric managed to do so, only to demand that Talos worship be reinstated, otherwise the Empire couldn’t get into Markarth to restore order.”

“I take it those demands didn’t go over very well?” Blake absentmindedly asked as she focused on breaking the lock of another cell, trying to get at the coin purse she had spotted inside.

“They did not. Due to this, the Thalmor discovered that the worship of Talos was still going on and that the terms of the White-Gold Concordat were not being enforced. As such, they demanded that Ulfric be arrested, which for a time he was. Many consider this event to be the true start of the Civil War, although it really only heated up this year, when Ulfric murdered High King Torygg. Shouted him to death, even.”

“What? How could yelling kill a person?” Yang butted in, confused. “Did Torygg have a heart attack or something?”

“If a heart attack could cause a man to explode, maybe.”

“Oh…”

“Anyway, the Civil War right now has been at a standstill, really. The Empire controls the West, the Stormcloaks control the East, with Whiterun, ruled by Jarl Balgruuf, the only one left undecided. Still, it can’t last forever. The Empire will eventually get the upper hand.”

“What makes you say that?” Blake asked, genuinely curious.

“Well, it’s the Empire," Cynrrberrt unhelpfully pointed out. "That might be oversimplifying it, but really, the only reason the Stormcloaks have made it this far is because they have bigger fish to fry. Most of the Shadow Legion is stationed along Cyrodiil’s southern border last I heard, along with the bulk of all regular Legions. Half the Imperial forces in Skyrim are local auxiliaries, with limited reinforcement from Cyrodiil. If the Emperor ever decides he can spare the forces from watching the Dominion like hawks, he could send a big enough army to rush over the Stormcloaks like a landslide.”

Yang shrugged. “So, which side do you think is right?”

“Personally, I don’t really care which side is right, as they both have a point. I may not be from here, being from Jehenna, but it’s still draining Skyrim and Skyrim alone for the most part. Honestly, though, war in any form is just… Never mind for now. Let’s keep going,” Cynrrberrt finished lecturing as they crossed a bridge. The fort had been becoming more cavernous for a while now, and now what they were entering was an honest cave tunnel. Blake’s bow flickered, and a moment later the others were hearing steel clashing. Recognizing the sound of battle, the girls rushed forward with all of them ready to intervene. The words that were being yelled at each other came clearer as they rounded a bend and saw two living men in the opposing sides’ uniforms.

“You have no right to place the blame on the Stormcloaks!”

“Who benefited the most from this?! Was it the Empire, or the Jarl who got his neck away from the headsman?!”

“That dragon killed several of my brothers in arms!” the rebel yelled as he swung his axe. The soldier backpedaled. “It was targeting Nords! You know who it ignored? Your elven taskmasters!”

“They…are not…our masters!” the soldier yelled as he slashed at the rebel only to be blocked, though it put his opponent on a bit of a backfoot.

“Yang, Blake, stop them!” Ruby commanded, ready to use her own weapon to disarm them if needed.

The two girls dashed forward, Yang pulling the rebel into a chokehold while Blake wrapped Gambol Shroud’s ribbon around the soldier’s sword arm and tugged him away before twisting the limb behind his back. The two fought against the ones restraining them as Ruby came up between them, Crescent Rose held out but not yet unfurled.

“Stop fighting!” she demanded. “There’s a dragon slaughtering people outside and you two killing each other is not going to stop it!”

The two ceased resisting and looked at the young girl who had commanded two grown men like she was a sergeant. The soldier sighed and looked back at Blake holding his arm behind him then to his foe.

“Truce, then?” he offered to the Stormcloak. The rebel huffed, a look of disgust on his face before he slowly let up his resistance.

“Fine.” He grumbled out. “Another damned truce then. We’ll get through Riverwood, but after that-”

“I know. Let’s hold back from killing each other ‘til Riverwood then.”

“Yeah… Let’s.” He looked back at Yang, who was easily holding him in a full nelson. “You’re strong, lass. You know that?”

“I get that a lot. Think they’re okay, Rubes?”

“Yeah, let ‘em go,” the younger girl conceded. The Huntresses-in-training released the two men, who rolled their shoulders and necks around before stashing their weapons to their sides. “Where are the survivors?” Ruby asked suddenly.

“Scattered,” the soldier told her. “It was one of the elder’s idea. Said the dragon couldn’t get everyone if they went in all directions. I hope by the Gods it worked.”

“I saw Jarl Ulfric escape through the south gate,” the Stormcloak explained. “He told me to keep an eye out for the people and get as many of our brothers and sisters in arms to safety as possible. Then some bloodthirsty Centurio decided that we should all be killed after we graciously decided to help the ones who were planning to behead us not even an hour ago.”

“You don’t know that!” the soldier defended. “We never got the story from the others before-”

“Time out!” Yang called while making a T sign with her hands. “No blame games here. We’ve all got to be focused on _not_ dying today.”

“The lass is right, gentlemen,” Cynrrberrt backed her up. “We need to make sure we can get somewhere safe before the dragon or something run mad by it gets us.

“Wait, is that the dead mage?” the Stormcloak asked as he looked at the man RWBY had rescued. At that, said mage seemed to nervously back away.

“Apparently not dead,” the soldier said before looking over the four teenaged girls. “Who are you all?”

“Travelers,” Blake answered quickly, figuring it was easier than giving them the whole explanation.

“We came up and saw Helgen burning,” Ruby explained. “We came to help, but then a dragon tried to kill us. We couldn’t even hurt it.”

“A whole cohort of legionnaires and some scattered militia couldn’t hurt that thing,” the soldier explained while shaking his head. He then looked back at the mage. “And you…”

“Look friend,” Cynrrberrt began, “I almost died in that cage until these girls got me out. I’m not looking for trouble, and I’ll say it again, I did nothing to deserve that. The crimes I was accused of were falsified beyond reason.”

“Well…while it’s not my decision to make, as far as I’m concerned, the man in that cage was dead and we were in a hurry.” Cynrrberrt seemed relieved to hear those words. “Beyond that, we should head out. Riverwood’s not far, but it’ll be dark by the time we’re halfway there at this point.”

“We can camp by the Guardian Stones,” the Stormcloak added. “Good position to keep an eye out from.” He then offered a hand towards Yang and gave her a smile. “Ralof.”

“Yang,” she traded while shaking it.

“And I’m Hadvar,” the soldier introduced himself. The others gave out their names as well, feeling the tension loosen as they became ever so much more familiar with each other. As they left the cave however, the tension flew back up with the sound of a roar. Everyone ducked for cover, Cynrrberrt being the last to react.

“Get down!” Hadvar said as he hid behind a boulder. All of them looked up as the dragon passed them way overhead, heading towards a northern mountain in the distance. Only a long moment after its disappearance did anyone dare to stand or speak.

“Looks like he’s left.”

“By the gods, you weren’t joking!” Cynrrberrt exclaimed. “An actual, Gods-blessed dragon! The Chantry of Akatosh will have a day and half when they hear of this!”

“Should be safe now, at least,” Ruby figured as she checked the sky with her scope. “Let’s go?” she asked the men who’d just joined their party.

“Aye,” Ralof responded while Hadvar nodded.

* * *

  
They camped near the river again, Team RWBY feeling like they had backtracked and lost a load of time. Luckily, the sledge wasn’t far away and they relegated Weiss to staying on it again with a canteen of water, Ruby spending a few minutes fussing over her as they headed downhill. Once things were settled for the day, Ralof decided to take first watch, with Blake going out to look around the perimeter with him.

“What exactly plagues your friend?” Hadvar asked as he stirred the fire and looked over where Ruby was doing another check over the heiress.

“We honestly don’t know,” Yang answered. “She got bit by something, and then she came down with a fever. Last night she had a seizure, and Ruby’s been low-key freaking out ever since.” Ruby herself seemed to punctuate that statement when she zipped over to her bag, dug something out, and then zipped right back to Weiss’ side.

“Hm, could be anything, but Bonebreak’s been common this year. We don’t have a local alchemist, unless you count Delphine and her brews, but the general store may have some things that’ll help. Though I’d suggest heading to a city or town to get her treated.”

“Yeah, we were hoping to do that at Helgen, but…”

“Ah, yes. I can’t imagine how this might upheave the surrounding lands. Not to mention that dragon.”

Yang hummed in thought, recalling the burned town and the dead men and women in and outside the fort. “Hey, mind if I ask about this war?”

“What of it?”

“Well, what exactly is going on? Cynrrberrt said it’s because of religion but…”

Hadvar shook his head and set his stick to his side. “Can’t really expect a Breton to understand everything going on here. You see, a good many Nords really believe it. They think they’re fighting for their right to worship Talos freely and openly.” His eyes narrowed as he stared into the fire. “But Ulfric? This was a power grab, plain and simple. If he really wanted the worship of Talos back, he would have worked with the High King rather than kill him. Gods, he would’ve worked with the Empire to get our strength back so that we could actually take a stand against the Thalmor when they next try.”

“You think there’s going to be another war?” Yang asked him, genuinely concerned about the possibility that this world’s Great War, or perhaps Great War Two would be the more accurate term, might kick off while they were still in it.

“No doubt there will be. The Empire was hurt, but they hurt our pride most of all. And the Dominion, they won’t be satisfied until every man, mer, and beast is under their boots or dead. The Concordat was only made to give us time to recover. The Emperor’s done well with what he has, but problems like Ulfric are slowing us down. If it wasn’t for this war, the men and women dying on each other’s blades could be readying themselves for the inevitable war to the south.”

“Damn,” Yang muttered. “These Dominion guys are really that bad, huh?”

“Probably worse. I’ve heard of the horror stories that come out of there. How they’ve massacred whole towns for a few rebels. The way they slaughtered thousands of Birdfolk for just being mannish. Dagons’ teeth, the stories Legate Fasendil has deigned to share are horrid enough. I can’t imagine what he’s kept to his chest.”

* * *

  
“So, what’s with this whole rebellion thing?” Blake finally chanced with the man. Ralof grunted, but crossed his arms before pausing in his steps.

“I can’t expect you to understand. You’re not a Nord.”

“I can try,” she offered. He nodded at that and sighed.

“It’s not a single thing, but many. When the Great War was raging, all of the Empire was fighting them back, and we were nearly in place to win. The Battle of the Red Ring ousted the Dominion in the Imperial City, and they were reeling. The fighters had killed a lot of their lords and the like, with only a few escaping through the sewer systems. And then…the Emperor gave in. He gave in to the very same demands we were fighting to resist. After that, Hammerfell broke away, but when the Dominion fought them, they won.”

“Hammerfell won?” Blake asked him to clarify.

“Aye. Surprised you hadn’t heard of that, lass.”

“We’re from outside of Tamriel.”

“Really?” His interest seemed piqued a moment. “Never actually met anyone from beyond. Just saw a few merchants here and there. Where are you from, then?”

“A place called Vale. Doubt you’d heard of it.” She figured she wouldn’t go into too much detail, as that’d be a tangent they wouldn’t return from.

“You’d be right. Well, beyond Hammerfell proving that the Dominion could have been defeated all along, the Thalmor sunk their claws into the Empire all the tighter, especially Skyrim. And the Empire does nothing about it. I’ve heard them say the Empire’s the only thing keeping the Thalmor out of Skyrim, but honestly, they’re the ones letting the Thalmor _in_. The Thalmor accuse anyone they want to take of heresy, then drag them away to never be seen again. Ulfric took a stand against it, demanding that the High King stand up or stand down. And when Skyrim’s laws and traditions dictated that Ulfric should be High King, the Empire stepped in and said no.”

“When he challenged him for the throne?” Blake asked. “I don’t know much about Skyrim law, obviously, but how many witnesses were there?”

“Not enough. Ulfric admits that was his biggest mistake with the duel, not making it public enough.” Ralof shook his head. “Don’t know if it would’ve mattered much to the Empire. We took a stand, and they took theirs. We just have to show them that we’re really willing to fight for what’s ours. And with Skyrim liberated, we can take the fight directly to the Aldmeri Dominion.”

Blake frowned at that. She knew where he was coming from, but it felt all too familiar. Still, this was neither the time nor place to try and talk a single man out of a deep-set belief. Instead, she just focused on the practical.

“Do you really think you can fight them off if it comes to it?”

“It’s a matter of distance and time. They’d have to come through Cyrodiil or around Hammerfell, and the Redguards will be sure to black the eyes of any Dominion ships trying to move through their waters. And having fought them or not, the Empire has no reason to help the Thalmor with a war. They’ll stretch themselves trying, and then we can all smash them. Whatever arguments or grievances we’ve had, all of mankind will agree that the Thalmor and Aldmeri Dominion is a threat to us all.”

Blake wasn’t sure if it was as polarized as he made it sound, but then again, this Dominion did hit a lot of the marks that Mantle had eighty years ago. If it turned out they had also banned art and restricted color in everyday use, then it would basically be prewar Mantle-but-Elves. She shook her head at the thought, a deep cultural revulsion causing her to feel the beginning of shivers trying to rise up at the thought of such a thing.

“Starting to get dark,” Ralof pointed out. Blake hardly noticed, having night vision that gave her almost perfect sight even in the dark. It would have to be pitch black for her to not see anything. “Let’s head back to camp. Looks like all of the wildlife’s been spooked by the dragon.”

“Yeah,” she agreed before they turned back.

* * *

  
“So, you see, while a little more magicka-demanding, it’s far easier to cast than ice-based magics,” Cynrrberrt explained to his near-captive audience. Though Weiss felt at least a little bit like a captive, just not by him but her leader, who had all but ordered her to lay down and not get up for anything.

“I see,” she said while reading over his notes and comparing them to the book the Dunmer gave her. She was finally getting the hang of it, able to call up sparks of electricity or a small flame to hover over her hand. She was able to ‘regenerate’ magicka faster than she lost it while simply holding these little cantrips in place, but attempting to cast the spells caused the magicka to dry up quickly. Lightning, she realized, required far more energy than fire. Though what she _really_ wanted was to be able to pick up on the ice-based magic soon.

“I never got far into the mechanics of ice spells,” the mage admitted. “I’ve always felt I’ve had enough magicka for a proper amount of lightning bolts or firebolts for most threats, and I’m honestly more of an Alterer. But you might want to get the basics down before you try shifting the ground under people’s feet or making the air twist itself around you just right.”

“Oh, I understand completely,” Weiss admitted. “I can imagine magic takes time to learn, same as any skill. I had the patience to learn to use a rapier, so I’m certain I will take the proper amount of time to learn over magic.”

“Good to hear, but honestly, you’ve taken to it like a duck to water. I’m surprised no one’s bothered to show you before. You could’ve been an adept by this point if you’d learned as a young girl.”

Weiss laughed a bit nervously. She wasn’t sure explaining that they were from another world was a good idea. There was only a small section on it in the _Field Guide_ , but apparently most of the denizens from outside of Nirn that entered it were hostile, with most of the remainder considered dangerous at best. She’d also rather not they be grouped with ‘demons’ solely because they were extradimensional as well.

“Now, let’s see… You’ll want to feel out the heat in the magicka, but instead of calling upon it, pull it away.”

Weiss did so, feeling a tingle of chill run over her hand. It wasn’t all that uncomfortable, which wasn’t too surprising. Being Solitan, it would take a lot of exposure to the cold before she started to feel uncomfortable. Flecks of ice and snow seemed to form above her palm and disappear at random.

“Well done, now forming it into usable spells… Well, that’s the hard part.”

“I think I can handle it,” she responded confidently. The man laughed at that.

“I believe you.”


	5. Mortal Realizations

Chapter 5: Mortal Realizations  
  


* * *

  
_14th of Last Seed_   
  


* * *

* * *

  
“Seriously, I’m fine!” Weiss complained while pulling the hood lower over her head. The sun was extra annoying today, and she could feel her sensitive skin turning pink under its rays. Frowning to herself, she took another sip of water and grimaced. Her stomach felt terribly water-logged, yet the thirst in her throat persisted. If anything, it only got worse and was now joined by a pang of deep hunger. Groaning, she dug out some bread and nibbled at it.  
  
“Nope,” Ruby refused before poking her cheek. “You’re staying on the sledge until we know exactly what’s wrong and can get you cured.”  
  
Weiss muttered indignantly at that, but didn’t bother arguing any further. There was no point. She’d already tried telling them that she felt fine after running from the dragon – and wasn’t that an event! – but Yang had countered her by pointing out how she’d drank down healing potions soon after, and that was likely a big factor in why she didn’t feel quite like someone who had recently suffered a seizure. Given that they weren’t sure of the effectiveness of the concoctions, nor how they even _worked_ , they couldn’t really judge how well it would have helped or how long it should last. For all they knew, it could suddenly wear off and she’d collapse at any moment.  
  
Didn’t mean Weiss had to like feeling like an invalid.  
  
“Wait,” Hadvar suddenly warned them, grasping the hilt of his sword. “Think I heard something.”  
  
Everyone paused in their steps and went quiet. Ralof readied his axe while others reached for their weapons. Cynnrbert seemed to be holding a light in his hands, his eyes glowing before tracking something they couldn’t see.  
  
“Wolves! About a dozen!” the Breton warned them.  
  
Their weapons came out, and then a moment later the wolves were upon them, leaping out of the forest and surrounding the group. Weiss had jumped up and grabbed her blade, not willing to sit out a fight her friends were in, even against something as mundane as simple wolves. The beasts came out of the woods in brown and grey blurs, far swifter and more agile than the girls expected. Noise from behind let the group know the pack was trying to surround them, probing at their defenses as the humans stood with their backs to each other. One wolf seemed to turn suddenly, heading straight for them before leaping. Weiss readied her rapier to impale it when a bolt of purplish-blue lightning went over her head and collided with it, sending the wolf back with a yelp. It hit the dirt and whined, other wolves stopping to sniff at it as it struggled to get up. Blinking in surprise, Weiss dared to look back and saw electricity coiling around Cynnrbert’s hands and wrists before coalescing into his palms and firing off where he aimed them. Two more wolves were hit, zapped and sent reeling, but not downed. Still, it seemed to be enough to convince the others to not come any closer, and so the pack backed off. As the animals retreated, a few paused and turned around to growl threateningly towards them, likely to ensure that they wouldn't be followed. Then they, too, turned around and ran out of sight into the forest.  
  
The group stood at the ready a while longer, everyone keeping their battle stances until the mage let his go and sighed.  
  
“All right,” he announced to the others. “They’re gone.”  
  
“That was…” Weiss began, not sure where to begin. The Dunmer’s Flames spell was surprising on its own, and Weiss was getting a feeling for the beginning techniques, but what Cynnrbert had just displayed was far more eye-catching and a stark reminder of the potential behind this realm’s ‘magic’.  
  
“That was awesome!” Ruby shouted excitedly, displaying a far less calm response. She began shooting her arms around theatrically while saying, “They were like, ‘Rawr!’, and you were like, ‘HAH!’, and then ‘zap’ ‘pew’, and then they were running with their tails between their legs!”  
  
Weiss and the rest of team RWBY rolled their eyes, used to seeing Ruby's childish antics. Cynnrbert chuckled in amusement as well as a slight hint of gratitude, as though he wasn't used to the praise.  
  
“Eh, good work, I suppose,” Hadvar said, catching the girls off-guard with his nonchalance. “Saved the rest of us the trouble.”  
  
“Well done, mage,” Ralof said, almost equally unimpressed.  
  
The girls felt confused by the Nords’ lack of reaction. As the group regathered, there were some quick whispers about how common magic had to be for them to act like that, but it was eventually shelved in favor of getting back on the road to Riverwood.  
  


* * *

  
“So, it’s right up against the river,” Yang noted as they came closer to the village. “That where the name come from?”  
  
“That, and the wood, likely,” Ralof admitted with a quick shrug. “I know, it's very creative. Our village mostly trades out through logging. Lumber is always in demand. Most of it is sent along the river.” He then peered over to their team leader, looking a little nervous about the situation. “You sure you’re not tired, lass?”  
  
“Nah, I’m good,” she grunted. Ruby was tugging along the sledge now, but she wasn’t struggling too hard. The girl _was_ used to lugging around a weapon larger than herself, so the weight of one teammate, the lightest one at that, wasn’t a big deal for her. But it did usually keep her from talking, and after a quick smile and wave towards the Nord, he dropped his concern and carried on.  
  
Soon, they were closing on the front gate of the wooden palisade, and as promised, Weiss was finally allowed to walk on her own feet. A number of tents were set up outside, Khajiit like those they saw at Solitude walking about or setting up stalls. A few Nords were looking over them, but didn’t seem too interested once they saw the two soldiers from opposing sides entering without killing one another. An elf carrying a load of chopped firewood then walked over from a side street, almost bumping into them. When he saw them, his eyes widened in recognition and he nearly dropped his load.  
  
“Hadvar, is that you? And Ralof?” the elf started upon seeing them, gently placing the firewood on a pile near him then rubbing his head with a confused smile. “Does this mean the war’s finally over?”  
  
“Sorry, Faendal,” the Imperial soldier sadly replied and shook his head. “Please, keep this to yourself if you can. We’re going to see our families for now, and we don’t need to draw attention.”  
  
“Oh, of course.” He nodded and looked back into the settlement, then towards Ralof. “Well, I guess you’re going to see your sister? We can head right over if you want.”  
  
“All right then. Hadvar, I assume you’ll head to your uncle’s?”  
  
“You assume correctly,” the soldier grumbled while heading in. Neither said another word nor looked at each other as they walked towards opposite sides of town, leaving team RWBY behind. The girls couldn't help but feel saddened at the scene, and all were frowning.  
  
“They really grew up together,” Blake mumbled as the locals went ahead of them. “They grew up here, and they’re fighting on opposing sides.”  
  
“It’s harsh,” Yang admitted while shaking her head. “I can’t imagine what got them here.”  
  
“Who could?”  
  
“Should we follow them?” Ruby asked, looking back at her teammates for their opinions.  
  
“Maybe,” Weiss considered for a moment. “At least, we should give them some time to catch up with their loved ones. We should look into stocking up and-”  
  
“Oh! We need to check for an alchemist doctor or whatever!” Ruby suddenly remembered before taking Weiss by the hand. “Come on! Shouldn’t take us long to find one. And we’ve got plenty of septims this time.”  
  
Weiss’ eyes were practically begging the other two to save her, but in an act of benevolent betrayal, they just watched her get dragged away by the suddenly rejuvenated Ruby.  
  
"A dragon! I saw a dragon!" an old woman started shouting from her porch. A young man nearby who seemed to have been trying to chat up some Ohmes-raht woman sighed and walked over to her.  
  
"What? What is it now, mother?"  
  
"It was as big as the mountain and black as night. It flew right over the barrow!" the elderly woman described, instantly making Yang and Blake pause in their steps.  
  
"Dragons, now, is it? Please, mother. If you keep on like this everyone in town will think you're crazy. And I've got better things to do than listen to more of your fantasies."  
  
"You'll see! It was a dragon! It'll kill us all and then you'll believe me!"  
  
Yang hissed in a breath at that while Blake winced.  
  
“So… They don’t know yet,” Yang realized. “Not sure if just telling people’s a good idea. If the old lady was the only one who saw anything…”  
  
“Yeah, let’s try and figure out who’s in charge,” Blake figured after thinking for a moment. “If nothing else, we’ll get some info for the team to use.”  
  
“Good call. They’ll also be the ones to know what we should do next.” A course decided, the two headed towards the village center, stopping by some people to ask some basic questions on the way.  
  
Left behind on his own, Cynnrberrt looked around himself. After a few moments, he shrugged.  
  
“Suppose I’ll get comfortable at the inn.”  
  


* * *

  
“So, that was a bust,” Ruby muttered as she and Weiss approached the other two members of their team, who were now standing near Hadvar and Ralof’s gathered kinsmen, the two soldiers themselves having discarded their uniforms for more civilian clothing. “No real local alchemist, and the general store just stocks general stuff. In retrospect, I should have figured that from the name. Lesson learned, I suppose.”  
  
“It’ll be fine,” Yang assured them. “Already asked, and Alvor here thinks the Khajiit caravan outside might be able to help.”  
  
“Alvor?” Ruby asked as a big Nord man with a sooty apron and hairy arms reached out a calloused hand in greeting.  
  
“Pleased to meet you,” he greeted her. “Ruby, right?”  
  
“Yes sir,” she responded, smiling nervously.  
  
“My nephew told me a bit about you. Not sure I believe half of it, but they’ve been waiting for you to tell the rest.”  
  
“Aye, and not even Ralof would fess up,” a woman said from the other side of their gathering. “I’ve already told the men to clear out, so the lumberyard is abandoned right now. We can talk there.”  
  
“Right, uh…” Ruby paused.  
  
“Gerdur,” the woman filled her in with a smirk. “Ralof’s sister. And this is my husband, Hod,” she indicated the man next to her, who gave them a friendly wave.  
  
“And my wife, Sigrid,” Alvor finished before they started towards the islet over a wooden bridge where much of the lumbering equipment was situated. “And your friend? Weiss, right?”  
  
“We told them a bit,” Yang filled her in. “Just enough to get started.”  
  
“So you didn’t mention Mr. Big-And-Flamey?” Ruby asked.  
  
“Nah, left the best parts for you guys. Besides, figured we’d need a more private venue.”  
  
“We didn’t want to cause a panic,” Blake added. “Even if the effects aren’t the same as back home, it wouldn’t do anyone any good right now.”  
  
“Well, no need to worry now,” Gerdur said as they stopped near an old, large stump and some chairs. “So, what exactly is going on?” she directed at the lot of them. “Surely…the war’s not over.”  
  
“No, at least, as far as we can tell,” Ralof answered. “The Empire had us captured, Jarl Ulfric too, and then…a dragon showed up at Helgen.”  
  
Everyone paused, The villagers' eyes widened and they looked at each other, then back at RWBY, Ralof, and Hadvar in clear disbelief.  
  
“A…dragon?” Gerdur muttered disbelievingly, hunching forward and rubbing her chin.  
  
“Are you certain you didn’t see things?” Alvor asked.  
  
“He’s telling the truth uncle,” Hadvar insisted, his face stern and focused. “It got…very close. I’d say I saw the white in its eyes, but it was all red. That thing…slaughtered us. It burned down Helgen without so much as a scratch on its hide. We barely got anyone out alive. These four and another came out behind us.”  
  
Ruby then spoke up. “We fought it for a while, but it’s like it’s made out of some sort of carbon nanotube steel alloy. We didn’t even scratch it. The most we did was make it flinch. And that was with Weiss hitting it with a ton of ice spikes.”  
  
“Carbon nano… What?” Alvor wondered aloud, confused as to what she was talking about, before shaking his head and moving on. “So then, a dragon? If there really is one, then this is bad news indeed. Riverwood isn’t made to defend against a large bandit raid, much less a dragon.”  
  
“We don’t even have guards,” Gerdur agreed. “We’ll have to send for aid. They may not be able to spare many, but from the sounds of things we don’t need to fight it, just have enough time to get the people away to hide.” She looked up at the four girls. “You lot wouldn’t mind helping us in that case, would you?”  
  
“We could probably help out. What do you need?” Yang immediately answered for the team, who all quickly nodded their heads.  
  
“We need someone to speak to Jarl Balgruuf directly,” the woman explained. “Someone to convince him that Riverwood needs at least a few men to guard us. I think four witnesses to the dragon attack would work for that. Sorry to ask you, but as you can tell, this is quite dire.”  
  
“Hadvar likely needs to return to Solitude and rejoin the Legion there,” Alvor put in. “And, I’m certain, Ralof will want to go back to Ulfric’s lot.”  
  
Blake felt a bit of tension between the two families and nervously coughed to break their attention from it.  
  
“We can get together transport for you,” Gerdur said. “The Khajiiti caravan will be in town for a few days. They’re headed straight for Whiterun after us. I’m certain they won’t mind another horse and buggy. The day after tomorrow is when they said they’ll be going.”  
  
“Just keep an eye on your coinpurses as you go,” Alvor said with a little chuckle. Blake began to glare at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. “No, don’t worry too much. We’ve traded with them many times. Honest enough folk, if strange at times. They can get you there safe, at least. Their warcats can be fearsome things. Keep the sabers off of you at any rate.”  
  
“Until then, we need to prepare.” Gerdur began to think. “The Embershard Mines southwest of us could be a good place to hide, but I think bandits have taken it over. Same problem with Bleak Falls Barrow.”  
  
“Embershard is closer,” Alvor pointed out. “Even if we don’t stay, having it cleared will give us a good place to wait it out. The barrow though… Might be in danger of the ones up there if we have to abandon the village. Not to mention there could be far more skulking about up there.”  
  
“So, two days to take out some bandits?” Yang smirked with some enthusiasm behind it. “No problem.”  
  
“You’re a confident one, I see,” Alvor said with a laugh, to which Yang nonchalantly shrugged while absentmindedly checking the back of her hand.  
  
“Meh, I could probably take them on my own.”  
  
“Well, if you think you could,” Gerdur began, seeming to take her confidence at face value, “Embershard is the first priority then.”  
  
“Got it!” Yang gave a thumb up.  
  
“Maybe we can do some things around town to help out,” Ruby suggested. “Ooh! Can I check out your forge?”  
  
“I suppose there’s no harm,” Alvor conceded. “So long as you know what you’re doing.”  
  
“We could check out the caravan?” Weiss asked Blake. The Faunus seemed a little nervous but nodded.  
  
“Well then, I’ll let Sigrid know to cook for a few extras tonight.”  
  
“We can help with that, Alvor,” Gerdur said. “You all needn’t worry for the next few days. After what you had to face, and what you’re doing for us, the least we could do is let you take it a bit easier.”  
  


* * *

  
Embershard was only about an hour’s walk away along the same road they came from, and Yang headed there as soon as she was able. Ruby felt apprehensive about letting her go and had been planning on joining her, but after getting a quick sitrep from the villagers and learning that there were only a dozen bandits and only three or four of them had any sort of combat competence, Yang convinced her to let her go alone. It was understood that if she didn’t return by six o’clock, the rest of the team would come in and there would be _words_. Yang, however, was confident that the outlaws wouldn’t stand a chance. Especially since she’d beaten the first one with a single backhanded slap.  
  
Yang tossed the guard away, who rolled down the hill with several grunts of pain. Heading inside, it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the difference in lighting. There were a few torches, but not so many as to completely mitigate the darkness. Nevertheless, she continued walking confidently with no hint of nervousness. Then she heard something snap at her feet and looked down to see a broken thin rope. Something shifted above her and she looked up in time to see several rocks crash down on her. She yelped and raised her arms to shield herself, but each one bounced off her Aura and settled around her feet. She huffed a little and groaned as she dusted herself off and picked small rocks out of her hair.  
  
“Traps, right,” she mumbled before continuing on. When she rounded a corner, she came across a wooden bridge over a pool of water. On the far right was a downward flight of stairs, and at the bottom was a small campsite. Two men were chatting among themselves, their backs turned to her as they instead tended to the fire.  
  
“Aren’t you worried someone’s going to walk in here?” she heard one of them say. “The entrance isn’t exactly hidden, you know.”  
  
“This again?" The other scoffed and shook his head. "I told you, we have someone standing guard out there. And don't forget the rock trap we rigged up.”  
  
“Yeah, that tickled,” Yang said as she walked in between them, loosely draping her arms across their shoulders. The two dumbfounded bandits turned their heads to her before jumping back in alarm, pulling out their weapons. “And by the way, your ‘guard’ couldn’t even do that much,” Yang quipped, cracking her knuckles.  
  
“You…”  
  
“Get her!”  
  
The two charged at her, only for one to get smacked aside easily. Yang blocked a slash headed for her neck and then socked the bandit in the jaw. She grabbed his shoulder and turned him, taking the iron sword from him and breaking it over her knee. The man looked at her in fear before taking off screaming, the other one running up and joining him, soaking wet.  
  
“Heh, losers,” she laughed while tossing the broken sword away. A raised bridge separated where she was from the rest of the mines, so she pulled the blatant lever that obviously lowered the bridge. The moment she did, more bandits came running, shouting about how the bridge wasn’t supposed to be down. As the group advanced down the bridge, Yang decided to introduce herself and leaped from the balcony onto the bridge. It shook from the impact, sending a few of the bandits stumbling. A few others backed up in surprise, but others did not and instead charged her. The first had a warhammer and swung it as soon as he got in range. She easily moved in past his defenses and shoulder checked him, sending him into a woman with darker skin. One man slashed with an axe only to get backhanded off the bridge. Two people shot arrows at her, which she caught before crushing them in her hands, then fired Ember Celica at them both in return. The bandits went down with a yelp, the sound of the gunshot echoing across the cave and causing the bandits near her to drop their weapons and clutch their ears in pain.  
  
“What’s going on here?” a man yelled from deeper inside the cave, attracted by the gunshot. When he emerged, he was fully clad in a suit of thick, heavy armor. The steel plate covered him from head to toe, and he had a shield and mace in his hands. He looked around the cave and saw the state of his men, and when he saw Yang, he growled angrily.  
  
“You’re going to regret this,” he seethed, shifting his mace's weight in his hand.  
  
“Nah, the only regret around here is aaaall yours,” Yang cheekily replied, raising her fists and angling herself to the side.  
  
With a mighty, bloodthirsty roar, the man came in with a heavy swing, faster than one would think his armor would allow. Yang deflected the first strike and ducked under the second before punching, only to hit his shield. The steel barrier was barely dented to her surprise, holding with a faint glow over its face. Now that she was closer, Yang could actually see that the man's entire armor had a faint sheen to it, seemingly originating from the shield itself.  
  
“Get her boss!” a bandit shouted from behind, cupping his hands around his mouth.  
  
“Show that harlot what for!”  
  
“Hey!” Yang shouted as she fired towards the one who had said that. The bandit in question hastily ducked, clasping the back of his head as the shot missed and sent rocks and dirt exploding outward from the wall.  
  
The ‘boss’, taking advantage of Yang's distracted state, quickly brought his mace down on her head, then smacked it across her face before ramming it up into her gut. The wind briefly knocked out of her, Yang rolled with the blow back across the bridge before coming up to her feet, annoyed. Before she could fire back, the 'boss' smiled and held out his mace with several strands of golden hair stuck on a single edge, waving it in front of his face.  
  
“Had enough?” he asked cockily.  
  
Yang looked up as her eyes went to red. She yelled and charged into an uppercut, knocking his mace aside before bringing down a torrent of blows onto him, denting his armor all around. He screamed, and Yang shouted as she reared back for a big strike, punching his helmeted face. Time seemed to slow as Yang heard a cracking sound coming from the helm. There then seemed to be a tearing noise, and red started gushing up as his head simply _left_ his body. Yang’s eyes went wide with fear and realization as the man’s head took off and hit the far side of the mine and blood erupted from the neck stump.  
  
The bandits started running and screaming. Yang looked over and noticed the two she had shot lying in pools of blood, holes in their torsos. She looked back at her hand and saw the sticky, red liquid covering it. She covered her mouth with her other hand, holding back the vomit that threatened to erupt out of her, and jumped off the bridge into the water below, desperately trying to clean the blood away.  
  


* * *

  
Weiss and Blake watched with open satisfaction as Camilla tore into both Faendal and Sven for their plans. The two men had the decency to look ashamed, but still occasionally glared at each other with resentment. Sven and Faendal had apparently both been trying to win Camilla's affections and thought that a falsely written letter would be enough to frame the other. They tried roping Blake into their schemes, but the Faunus, disgusted by their methods, took matters into her own hands and jointly revealed their actions to the young woman. One quick convincing of an, at first, reluctant Weiss later, and now both simply sat back and enjoyed the show.  
  
“Okay, that was fun,” Weiss admitted through a small smile, to which Blake nodded approvingly.  
  
“Yeah. Told you.”  
  
Weiss nodded back, then got up from the wall and stretched her arms. “Let’s check out that caravan now.”  
  
Blake's bow angled downward slightly as she whined, “Do we…”  
  
“Yes," Weiss cut her off. "The medicine the innkeeper gave me helped, but I’m still feeling…thirsty. I’ve had to stop for a break five times today already. If I keep this up, I could drink myself to death. Besides, the Khajiit could have something as well. They’re supposed to have come from a place that’s half jungle half desert, after all, so they might have different concoctions that could help.”  
  
Knowing that Weiss was right, Blake went along with her, her ears twitching when she saw the Khajiit in their camp. A few of them were _Senche_ and honestly looked like some form of big cat, if there was a big cat with shoulders as tall as a man and slightly shorter back legs, bigger versions of a couple of those cubs from Solitude. Despite their bestial looks, they still wore clothes and necklaces. One looked at them and nodded.  
  
“Greetings,” it said, its necklace glowing with the words. “Khajiit welcomes you. Gerdur has asked that four men girls accompany us to Whiterun. These are you?”  
  
“We are,” Weiss demured. “Us, and our other two teammates. I was wondering though, do you think you have some sort of medicine or…potion that can help me? I believe I’ve come down with something this past week.”  
  
“You are in lucky paws. Do’dran’s wife is a skilled alchemist and knows many cures and treatments. Ko’ari can help you. Follow this one.”  
  
The two followed the quadrupedal Khajiit further into the camp. There were a few children, but the smaller ones mostly looked like regular big cat cubs, even though several of the older ones walked upright. One of them seemed to be shedding hair excessively.  
  
“You wonder about moon forms?” Do’dran asked them.  
  
“It’s…curious,” Weiss admitted. “I don’t quite understand how your…forms range so much. I mean, I read about it, but reading it and seeing it...”  
  
“It depends on the cycles of the moons. The ja-Kha’jay is tied to every Khajiit. Within a few weeks, one can see the form that we have taking hold. The three smallest cubs you see are newborns. The one losing her fur is _Ohmes_. She is nearing a year old.”  
  
“Well," Blake started, "you all certainly grow fast.”  
  
The Khajiit laughed at this and the three stopped by a woman grinding something with a mortar and pestle. Her ears flickered about a moment, and then she looked up at them. She was mostly furless, looking almost like a cat Faunus to the two save that she had no human ears along with her cat pair. Her face had markings that looked almost like tattoos, but Blake realized they resembled the fur markings many of the others had.  
  
The two Khajiit pressed their faces together a moment before she focused on the newcomers. “Welcome, young ones. You come to Ko’ari for healing, potions, or something else?”  
  
“Uh, healing, I suppose,” Weiss began. “I’m a little sick, you see.”  
  
The Khajiiti woman began looking at Weiss’s face very closely then sniffed her. “How do you feel?”  
  
“Um, thirsty, mostly," Weiss answered. "I keep wanting to drink no matter how full I am.”  
  
“And hunger?”  
  
“Well, I have been craving a rare steak lately, which is odd since I normally prefer medium.” There was also the deeper, inexplicable hunger that she wasn’t sure she could mention. The fact that images of gnawing raw flesh seeped into her waking mind was disturbing. Just as well, she was sure it wasn’t important, let alone pertinent to her situation.  
  
“Hm," the Khajiit hummed, "likely blood rot.”  
  
Weiss blanched at the sound of that. “Blood rot?”  
  
“Yes." Ko’ari nodded. "Odd disease, it is. Affects the humours. Still, perhaps a bit of… No, not for a man girl like you. Let’s see. A…dash of moon sugar? Yes, that should do it. A moment, friend.”  
  
Ko’ari went over to a table and began rummaging through things, fitting some into another mortar and crushing them together. She set a pot of water to boil over a fire and started putting some of the ingredients in, as well as a handful of some sugar-like substance. She ladled some of the boiling mixture into a beaker, and then poured it through an alembic, where it dripped into a vial after mixing with some sort of solution and being boiled over a burner. Once the vial was filled, she turned off the valve and handed it to Weiss.  
  
“That should make you feel much better.”  
  
Weiss held the drink in hand for a moment, then sniffed. She winced at the strong stench and nearly gagged, then powered herself through and drank the concoction. It was sweet and had a slimy feeling to it. She wanted to scrape her tongue to get the taste out, but it sat warm in her belly and the sliminess of it seemed to coat her throat, making her feel less thirsty than before.  
  
She smacked her lips for a few moments as she handed back the empty vial, feeling the medicine take effect. Ko’ari laughed.  
  
“You should feel better soon. You will need more doses in the coming days. Ko’ari will finish bottling the rest. She supposes it should cost… Hm, the lizard tail is hard to get in Skyrim… Moon sugar should be… Ack, five malks for the whole thing.”  
  
“Ko’ari is a healer, not a merchant," another Khajiit protested as Blake's eyes widened at the price. "Your sister would hate to see you practically give away product.”  
  
“It is my ingredients. Ko’ari will sell them how she sees fit.”  
  
“Five malks?” Blake asked in disbelief. They almost never had that many septims at once, and she doubted they had that much at the moment. And this was apparently practically giving it away.  
  
“If it helps, there should be plenty of coin in that barrow," Ko'ari pointed out. "We would go there, but it is cold enough for Khajiit on the level ground.”  
  
“There are also bandits,” Do’dran added. “This one prefers to avoid the bandits.”  
  
“I… Maybe we should go there,” Weiss suggested with a finger held up, suddenly feeling much more animated than usual. “Alvor and Gerdur talked about clearing it out just in case!”  
  
“Are…you okay, Weiss?” Blake asked, eyebrow raised. That last sentence had come out at Ruby-speed, a very un-Weiss-like behavior.  
  
“I'm fine! Great, actually! I’ll go tell Ruby! We can go up there later today or tomorrow!” Blake looked at her eyes and noticed how dilated they seemed. “I bet we can become a feared name in no time like this!” She sped off back to Riverwood. Blake stared after her teammate for a moment, immediately recognizing the signs of a drug-induced high, then shot her head around with an expression that screamed 'What did you do?' to the Khajiit traders.  
  
“Oh, there may be side effects,” Ko’ari just now warned her. “This one wasn’t too sure how much moon sugar she should add. Now I suppose your friend may be having a… What do we call it?”  
  
“Either sugar rush or sugar fit. Do’dran is not too sure.”  
  
“Just what is moon sugar anyways?” Blake groaned at this chain of events. "Is it why my friend is suddenly high?"  
  
“Ooh, how do we explain?” Ko’ari mumbled as she tapped her chin.  
  


* * *

  
Ruby wiped her forehead and looked at the sword blade she had just dipped. It was all hammered out, now it just needed a hilt and some sharpening. The hilt was already ready, she just had to wedge it in. Once that was done, she took it over to the grindstone and started pedaling while running the edge against the stone, slowly and methodically. Dorthe had joined her father in watching the girl work the forge and had to be pulled back by the man when she tried to get closer to see the sword being sharpened.  
  
With the edge nice and sharp as a razor, Ruby looked over her handiwork. It was just a simple steel sword, but she bet it could cleave right through a monster in the right hands. Maybe not that dragon, but it could likely bring down one of those trolls. She gave it a test swing and smiled brightly as it sang through the air.  
  
“Divines smile,” Alvor murmured as he eyed the sword. “Can I see that for a moment?”  
  
“Sure. Here ya go.” Ruby handed over the newborn sword and Alvor began to look it over from every angle.  
  
“You weren’t joking when you said you knew your way around a forge,” he gasped in amazement. “I don’t think I’ve seen a blade this good since I last saw one of Eorlund Greymane’s works.”  
  
“Ah, geez, don’t,” Ruby gushed as her cheeks went red from embarrassment.  
  
“It’s amazing!” Dorthe babbled as she looked at the sword in her father’s hands. “I hope I can one day be half as good as you!”  
  
“Aww, thanks! You’ll be great. I can tell,” Ruby told the younger girl. Dorthe smiled widely, her eyes gleaming in open awe as Alvor smiled warmly.  
  
Suddenly, Weiss came bouncing into the forge, startling the three smiths as they stared at her. “Ruby! We should all go up to Bleak Falls Barrow!” she announced.  
  
“Uh, if you think so Weiss," Ruby said, then tilted her head and leaned slightly forward. "You seem happy. Reeeaaaaally happy, actually.”  
  
“Oh, I feel great! I got some medicine from the caravan, and I think I’m finally cured! I’m going to let Yang know!”  
  
“Weiss, Yang’s at the mine!” Ruby called after her partner as she sped away. She blinked and looked at Alvor. “That was weird. The last time I saw Weiss that happy, the Vytal Festival was being planned.”  
  
“I think the Khajiits likely know what made her like that," Alvor plainly stated, then looked to the side as Blake slowed to a stop in front of his home. "Ah, your other friend.”  
  
Blake leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees and gasping a little. “Ruby, did Weiss come here?”  
  
“Yeah, she said she’s going to tell Yang that we’re going to Bleak Falls. What’s up with her?”  
  
“She took some medicine, but then the maker explained to me that she might have used too much moon sugar. She’s high as a kite right now!”  
  
“Oh, so like reverse Nightwill™. Okay, well, Yang should have finished up the mine by the time she reaches her.”  
  
“She could get hurt on her own!”  
  
Ruby paused, then nodded in understanding. “Okay, we’ll go after her.” She turned back to the blacksmith and offered a smile. “Thanks again Alvor.”  
  
“Anytime, Ruby. If you can make things like this, then my forge is open to you any time you’d like. In fact, I’ll be happy to pay for any work you’re willing to help with.”  
  
The young Huntress-in-training’s smile brightened as she waved at the blacksmith and his daughter. She then joined Blake in running after Weiss, a few red petals following her wake.  
  


* * *

  
Yang gripped her shoulders as she slowly walked along the road from the now emptied mines. She could see the tracks the bandits left as they fled, tearing through small bushes and ripping apart mountain flowers while crumpling the grass where they ran. All that remained in Embershard now was some scattered belongings, abandoned by the men and women who had fled, and the three bodies. She didn’t know where they had all scattered, but it didn’t matter to her anymore. Yang was just going to head back to the village, explain everything to Gerdur, and hope the woman would be lenient. There might not even _be_ legal ramifications for all she knew. Back on Remnant, there were plenty of less than upstanding Huntsmen who would sooner eradicate a raider group than let them cause harm to nearby settlements, and they never received much more than a slap on the wrist, if that. And based on that execution they witnessed in Solitude, the prosecution of such criminals in Skyrim was probably no more merciful.  
  
She shivered as the mental image of a man’s head flying off and being replaced by a fountain of blood came back to the forefront of her mind. She had hit plenty of people that hard. Some she hit harder. She was sure she hit her _friends_ harder on occasion during practice or in spars. But they had Aura. Anyone back home who ever even _thought_ about fighting had Aura. That man hadn’t, nor had the two bandits she shot down. Something that for most people she knew would have been a painful impact had torn them apart.  
  
She had killed them, and it was something her mind didn’t quite want to accept right now. Bile tried to rise up, but she managed to hold it down, splitting her focus on holding herself together and getting back to the village where she could try and find a way to forget all of this. A rapid pit-patting of feet then reached her ears, coming from up ahead. Yang looked up to see what it was and caught sight of a white blur coming straight for her. Before she could focus on it, it stopped right in front of her, revealing a wide smile that just seemed _wrong_ for the face it was a part of.  
  
“Yang! There you are!” Weiss exclaimed way too cheerfully.  
  
“Weiss? What are you…” Yang then saw her teammate’s eyes and noticed how dilated they were. Holding her friend’s face, Yang quickly figured out the basics of what had occurred while she was away. “Weiss, have you taken anything…strange?”  
  
“Just some medicine from the caravan. It’s working _wonders_!” Weiss answered through a beaming smile. Yang paused and closed her eyes, counted to ten, then released a sigh and looked right at Weiss' face.  
  
 _‘Better to pull the bandage off quickly,’_ Yang thought to herself. “Weiss, I’m gonna say this slowly. You. Are. High.”  
  
“What do you mean I’m-” Her attention suddenly snapped forward as realization dawned on her. “Oh, I get it.”  
  
“Yeah, we should get you somewhere to lie down for a while.” The blonde kept the fact that she wanted nothing more than to lie down as well to herself.  
  
“Ooh, you should meet the Khajiits,” Weiss gushed as she started leading her back to Riverwood. Just because she was aware of her impaired state didn't mean she was coming down anytime soon. More than a couple of irresponsible friends taught Yang that the hard way. “They’re actually very nice, and their babies are these cute little kittens. Remember back in Solitude? Well, the _really_ little ones are even more adorable!”  
  
“Sounds nice. I’ll go there with Blake later.” If Weiss had taken notice of Yang's subdued demeanor, she didn't show it and continued prattling on about the people-kittens for a few minutes.  
  
“Ooh, Blake was there when I got the medicine. She already met Do’dran and Ko’ari. I think they’re a cute couple.”  
  
“I bet they are.” As Yang absentmindedly replied, she started hearing people up ahead. The voices came clearer as they neared them, until she could make out Ruby and Blake’s voices.  
  
“Weiss?” she heard Ruby holler. It seemed they were at least a little aware of the need to look out for their friend. “Weiss?”  
  
“Over here,” Yang called out. As her partner and sister reached them, Blake quickly pulled Weiss aside and began scolding her, insisting that they wouldn't be going to Bleak Falls Barrow while Weiss was in such a state, even as the blancette tried to argue that they could make good time. Ruby, meanwhile, slowly shifted her attention towards her sister, noticing that something was different with her countenance. Before she could speak up, Yang made a gesture as though to ask what was going on with Weiss. Ruby shifted her attention back towards her partner, sparing Yang a little more time to get her thoughts together and figure out whether she should say anything at all.  
  


* * *

  
  
Night descended quickly once team RWBY reentered Riverwood. Luckily, Alvor and his wife Sigrid were kind enough to lend the Huntresses their home for the night. The events of the last few days racing through her mind, Ruby herself sat in silent contemplation at the end of her borrowed bed in Alvor's basement. Weiss, meanwhile, merely mumbled to herself while lying on a bed. Sigrid was preparing dinner upstairs, venison stew if the smell was anything to go by, and the other three girls were seated nearby as they watched over their friend, who was finally coming down. Ruby looked over at Yang as her sister seemed to be shuffling about within herself. She didn't think it was because of Weiss, as everyone had told them she would bounce back fine, if a little groggy and possibly hungover. Ruby thought about staying silent on the matter, but didn't want Yang to feel alone with whatever she was thinking.  
  
"Yang?" she began.  
  
"Hm?" Yeah, her sister was out of it. Way too...quiet for her.  
  
"What's wrong? You've been kinda...down."  
  
Yang put on a smile, but Ruby could see right through it. "It's nothing! Don't worry! I've just got a lot on my mind, really. I mean, a lot has happened in a... It's been about a week, now?"  
  
Ruby reached over and placed a hand on her sister's arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Yang, if there's anything you want to talk about, I'm here, okay?"  
  
She saw Yang's eyes go blue for a moment. The blonde blinked, and then Blake reached over and patted her shoulder.  
  
"We're all here," the Faunus added. Yang smiled at her partner and nodded. A moment later, a sound like a saw rose up and the three turned to see Weiss lying on her side and snoring. The girls chuckled a little, and Yang pulled up the blanket over the sleeping heiress.  
  
"Supper's nearly ready if you want to come up," Sigrid said quietly from the top of the stairs. "How's your friend?"  
  
"Sleeping like a baby," Ruby responded, putting aside the matter with Yang as she climbed up to the main floor. "Anything we can help with?"  
  
"If you can just grab some bowls and plates and set the table, we can get started soon. Alvor and Dorthe are washing up right now."  
  
"Can do, ma'am." Blake and Yang followed after her, but the latter paused as she came across a shelf with several bottles set on it. Her lips pursed as she looked back up to where the others were getting ready. Her eyes trailed back to the bottles before she gently reached over and grabbed a couple, looking over them for a few seconds before clearing her throat.  
  
“Want me to bring up a couple of these?” she asked her hosts.  
  
“Sure. And help yourself while you’re at it,” the woman told her.  
  
While something else inside kinda twisted, another part of Yang that felt like it had been festering for hours seemed awash with relief. She pulled the cork from one of the mead bottles and took a deep swig, letting the sweetness and the burn take away all of her attention. She grabbed a couple more and brought them upstairs, purposefully ignoring the look of concern her sister had for a few moments.


	6. Stained Hands

Chapter 6: Stained Hands  
  


* * *

  
_15th of Last Seed_   
  


* * *

* * *

  
Morning came; and with it, more than a few groans. Yang had helped herself to a few bottles of mead at supper, Alvor more than willing to share his stock with her. He actually seemed to find it amusing, although Ruby certainly didn’t. The blonde hadn’t really gotten a hangover, but she did experience a brief headache before breakfast. Weiss was actually far worse. Apparently, the medicine was less a cure and more of a treatment. They did allow her another dose, this time remixed and diluted by the potion-making Khajiit woman, and it did seem to help, but Ruby noted with some trepidation how her eyes kept glancing at the bag they’d placed her future doses in.  
  
In her own mind, Weiss _did_ want more of the medicine. It was certainly helping, but between the lack of inhibition and the constant, aching hunger-thirst, she would almost always choose the former, even dulled as these new doses made it. For once, she could, on some level, understand her mother. A thought that pushed her further away from upping her dosage. More than anything, the thought that she might be developing an addiction was terrifying to her.  
  
With breakfast eaten and gear prepared, the girls readied themselves to head up to Bleak Falls Barrow. They would have to hike up a mountain trail towards it, which would take time and mean more than a little exercise, but it was nothing that they couldn’t handle. The crisp mountain air had a different feel to it than the milder climate down below, but it was soon joined by a freezing cold that made them all glad they had accepted the thick coats offered by the villagers.  
  
“Whew! I can see my breath!” Ruby said as she did her best to keep herself warm. “Any colder I might breathe out icicles.”  
  
“Cold enough for you, Weiss?” Blake asked while trying not to shiver.  
  
“Admittedly, even I’m feeling it, but this is really more like an average day in Atlas,” Weiss admitted, barely showing any reaction to the frigid mountain air.  
  
“Sheesh, remind me not to go there without a coat or three,” Ruby quipped with a smile. Her glee faded for a moment as she looked back at Yang, who was taking up the rear and seemed more than a little down. “You okay back there?”  
  
“Y-yeah,” Yang answered, giving her a nervous smile and a wave. “All good. Just a lot of thoughts right now.”  
  
“What’s there to think about?” Ruby shrugged as she turned back and tried to look ahead with her rifle’s scope. “We’re going to beat up and chase off some bad guys, maybe bring ‘em down to prison.”  
  
“Probably best if we scare them off,” Weiss added. “Knowing the likely fate of bandits, they’d choose that over whatever primitive justice they might meet here.”  
  
“Bandits…” Yang muttered as her steps slowed, new images taking over her mind. She could almost see a small horde of men and women standing against them and then charging them, thinking they could easily take on four young women. Ruby would probably move first, being the fastest, firing two shots and then dashing forward, almost faster than her bullets. Two people would’ve gone down with holes in their bodies before her scythe came and sliced through a man. They would hit the ground with blood pooling all around them, and her sister’s face…  
  
Yang blinked and snapped herself out of it, looking forward to see that her team had turned towards her. It took her a second to realize that she had completely stopped in her tracks and they were likely wondering what was the matter. Taking a deep breath, Yang tried to brace herself for what to say, yet she wasn’t sure what she _could_ say right now. At the same time, there was no way she could let them go ahead here and charge in without knowing what she’d learned. She let it out in a huff and took in a new breath.  
  
“Guys,” she started, wincing as she forced herself to get out the words. “There’s something I need to tell you.”  
  


* * *

  
“There’s no Aura?” Weiss asked in disbelief after hearing out Yang’s explanation. The others were equally as shocked, going purely by their expressions, though they hadn’t spoken up.  
  
“If there was, those bandits would have had it, but they didn’t,” Yang explained, the pain she felt inside herself growing numb at finally coming out. “The guy who fought me, he only lasted as long as he did because he was armored and had a magical shield or something, but even if he had a puny amount of Aura, he should have been fine. I hit random thugs with the same amount of force, and all it did was send them flying. I… He…”  
  
“Oh Yang,” Ruby said while reaching over and gently pulling her into a hug. The blonde looked over at her sister and saw a sad smile on her face. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. And it’s not… It’s not the…” She blinked and shook her head.  
  
“Are you sure this means no one on Nirn has Aura?” Blake asked.  
  
“Yang has a point,” Weiss pointed out. “If anyone would have Aura, it’s people who expect to fight for most of their lives. Bandits would get that at the minimum. No one wants to die because some villager got in a lucky hit with a shovel.”  
  
“And this is an alien world,” Yang reminded them, pulling back from Ruby’s finished hug and crossing her arms. “It feels weird saying it, but that’s what it is. It might have some familiar plants, animals, and people, but this whole planet is not like Remnant. The course of natural history itself is way different. Not only that, but there’s no Grimm. People here just…don’t have the same pressure for survival as those on Remnant.”  
  
“There’s still danger,” Ruby pointed out.  
  
“One fire-breathing dragon and some animals that could give the average Beowolf a run for its money isn’t the same as the constant threat of Grimm,” Blake explained. “Dragons were apparently beaten once upon a time, and now they’re practically myths, and monsters like those trolls are still flesh and blood animals. Even the people there said that one was likely hungry and desperate. It’d be like if all we had to worry about on Remnant were occasional packs and one Leviathan every century or so. People just…wouldn’t be as strong. There’d be no reason to be. Add magic to the mix, and people just don’t _need_ Aura as much.”  
  
“But it…doesn’t make sense,” Ruby continued to wonder. “It’s still part of every living being. Everything with a soul has Aura.”  
  
“That’s true…” The Faunus began to contemplate that as well.  
  
“Maybe _someone_ knows about it, but not the average layman,” Weiss concluded. “I can easily picture some monastic orders or warrior groups learning about it and keeping it secret, but right now we don’t have that kind of information. Even the occasional Aura unlocked by strenuous events could have been ignored or written off as flukes, and that’s assuming the person who unlocked it even knew what was going on in the first place.”  
  
“So, what do we do?” Yang asked the others. “We can’t exactly beat down a bunch of people without Aura.”  
  
“We can. If we’re careful,” Ruby quickly amended. “We’ll just have to… What’s the saying? Kiddy gloves?”  
  
“Put the kid gloves on?” Weiss asked.  
  
“Yeah, that.” Ruby nodded and gave them all a small smile. “We’ll start small and work our way up until we find the right amount of force to use. Hit soft at first, like if you were playing with a friend. No sharp or pointy edges unless you absolutely have to. Blake, Weiss, punch and kick more. Yang, punch softer. Blake, you and I can use the back of our weapons if we’re careful about how hard we hit. Weiss can use her Semblance on them directly, but hold off on the Dust. We do this right, and everyone will be okay.”  
  
“We might need to coordinate differently,” Weiss mentioned as she thought their approach over.  
  
“We’ll figure it out as we go. Just do your best, guys.”  
  


* * *

  
The four slowly approached the stone, partially crumbled tower they had come upon. It was overlooking the valley below, connected to the mountain path through a small stone bridge. If they had to guess, this used to be an ancient watchtower that had long since fallen out of official use, meaning it was ripe for the taking by any entrepreneurial bandits. Blake was in the lead, being the stealthiest among them, with Weiss not far behind. Ruby and Yang hung back behind some shrubbery to hide the bright colors of their clothes until they were signaled. After Blake crossed the short bridge, her head perked up, and then she looked up the tower a moment before leaping up the side and going through the window. A man’s voice shouted out, and then the other three were rushing in.  
  
“What the heck?” Yang muttered as they came up to the entrance. Ruby was also wondering what made their teammate suddenly jump ahead when the plan had been to silently take down whoever was posted at this tower, but that was a question to ask when they caught up and secured the immediate area. The three practically leaped up the stairs to the next level, pausing as they saw their teammate standing over an unconscious man with her sword pointed at a dark-skinned woman. The woman in question was rubbing one of her wrists and grimacing, but still kept a cautious eye on Blake, sparing the newcomers a glance for only a moment.  
  
“What happened?” Ruby asked after taking in the scene.  
  
“I heard a…commotion and looked into it,” Blake tried to explain, her eyes turning to the unconscious man as an angry frown morphed onto her face.  
  
“Bastard,” the woman muttered through her teeth, still rubbing her wrist. “Couldn’t take no for an answer.”  
  
As the others were starting to put what happened together, a bushy-bearded Nord walked in from the upper level. He opened his mouth to begin speaking but stopped when he saw the scene before him. Weiss and Ruby both drew their weapons, but it was likely the unfurling of the latter’s that convinced the man to take his hands away from his sheathed sword.  
  
After tying up the three bandits and resisting the urge to brain the unconscious man, Team RWBY set out some of their food and three mugs of water onto the nightstand next to them. The woman had whispered to her other companion about what had happened, and now he was glaring at his fellow as well. Yang almost felt like kicking the man awake, but didn’t trust herself to hold back enough for that at the moment.  
  
“Okay, if you guys get thirsty or hungry, just lean over,” Ruby instructed them. “If your buddy gets hungry, you’ll have to pass him something. Same with the water.” The woman had been tied to the other side, away from the men, but the unconscious one was right next to his counterpart. Somehow, the girls figured that the man wouldn’t be getting anything until they returned. “We can’t exactly let you guys roam free while we’re moving forward. You could sneak up behind us or something. But, once we come back, we’ll think about letting you go.”  
  
That earned a pair of groans from the bandits, but at least they weren’t promising threats of violence like Weiss imagined they might. The team left the tower and made their way further up the mountain. The barrow was up ahead, and it was even more marvelous to see up close. Great stone arches, decorated with dragon heads, marked the entrance to the crypt. Ruby felt herself channeling her inner Oobleck and marveled at the ancient ruins as they walked towards them, thinking about the scale of such a construction and what it indicated about the land’s past, only to have those thoughts abruptly halted as an arrow flew by her head, missing by inches, and embedding itself into a nearby tree.  
  
“Scatter!” she commanded as she drew Crescent Rose and tried to spot her attacker while resisting the urge to ready a shot. She zeroed in on a Bosmer woman with a mohawk-like hairstyle taking aim at her with a bone-white bow and changed direction to rush her, the stairs providing little impediment to her petaled Semblance. Another arrow flew straight for her, but Ruby knocked it out of the air with her weapon as she stopped. The woman seemed surprised and was unable to react in time before Ruby swung her scythe around, hitting her with the blunt side and sending her ten feet through the air to fall onto a pile of snow.  
  
“Okay, a _little_ softer,” Ruby told herself before seeing more bandits readying themselves for combat. Weiss slid forward on one of her glyphs, knocking bandits over with the broad side of her sword and sweeping kicks. Yang came in, visibly holding herself back, but still knocking outlaws around with her fists. Blake jumped in and out, blocking blows before smashing her opponents around. A digitigrade Khajiit leaped at her from behind, claws, teeth, and a sword bare, but what he attacked disappeared and the actual Blake reappeared before bringing her heel up to his chin, knocking him out cold.  
  
Soon, all of the bandits were down for the count, Ruby counting around twelve of them sprawled out or groaning in pain.  
  
“Okay, there’s a few more somewhere. They said there would be sixteen at the barrow.”  
  
“Inside…” a man lying near her feet groaned while clutching his stomach, the same place where she had kicked him moments ago. “Please don’t kill me,” he begged.  
  
“Thanks, and sure,” she told him before pulling him up and dragging him over to where her friends were tying and bunching up the others. Once secured, the girls snuck into the first chamber of the barrow. Once again, Blake took point with the others not far behind. The inside was messy, with some recently killed skeevers and thrown around debris scattered about. There was a fire up ahead, and two more bandits stood next to it warming their hands.  
  
"So we're just supposed to sit here while Arvel runs off with that golden claw?" the woman asked while rubbing her arms.  
  
"That Dark Elf wants to go on ahead, let him. Better than us risking our necks," her male companion grumbled.  
  
“What if Arvel doesn't come back? I want my share from that claw!"  
  
"Just shut it and keep an eye out for trouble."  
  
The woman scoffed and started to head out, but just as she passed the first pillar away from the fire, Blake grasped her mouth and body and yanked her away, only a muffled scream being heard. The man immediately went on alert and took out his axe.  
  
“What was that?!” he shouted in surprise while looking around in fear. “Soling?” he called out, but no answer came. As he breathed heavily and tried to figure out what to do, a flash of gold skipped into the firelight and Yang was there, waving coquettishly and smiling at him, to his confusion.  
  
“S’up?” she asked before her other hand came up from behind her waist in a fist, sucker-punching his chin _just_ hard enough to rattle his brain and cause him to fall over. She grabbed him before he could land on the fire and pulled him away to where his friend had disappeared before his eyes.  
  


* * *

  
It took some time, but soon all of the bandits were gathered into the chamber, including the three from the tower. Most were grouped up, but once word got around, the attempted rapist had to be separated from the rest as they were ready to bite and kick him until he was bleeding. Apparently, deduced from their shouting, he broke ‘the rules’.  
  
“I guess even bandits have to have a code,” Weiss concluded while watching the tied-up baker’s dozen of outlaws jeer their fellow. “Well, there’s still two more, and it sounds like one of them has the Golden Claw.”  
  
“The what?” Yang asked with an eyebrow raised.  
  
“Long story short,” Blake answered, “Weiss and I went by the general store and offered to get a valuable item that this lot stole back to the owner, after hearing him and his sister…argue.” She looked back at the bandits, who mostly just sneered at them. “Then we…pulled off a little something to help Camilla out.” She smirked at the memory, and Weiss even giggled as she twirled her fingers while summoning sparks of electricity between them.  
  
“H-hey!” one of the bandits said nervously. “Careful with the magic!”  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she mockingly apologized while holding out her hand. “This magic?” An arc of electricity suddenly leaped from her hand, stopping just short of hitting the man’s leg, who shrieked and bounced in his attempt to jump away. Weiss actually blinked in surprise and looked at her hand in interest.  
  
“I finally did it,” she uttered in muted astonishment.  
  
“Good job, Weiss!” Ruby congratulated her with a half-hug. “You’re now a mage!”  
  
“Eh, I’ve seen better,” a red Argonian mouthed off. Weiss glared at him, but then drew in a breath and released it.  
  
“So, we’re moving in?” Yang asked while looking at the stairway leading down into the tombs with some trepidation. “Kinda…creepy down that way.”  
  
“Well, Weiss and Blake did promise to bring back Lucen’s stuff, and there’s two more guys we’ve got to worry about,” Ruby explained before looking back at their prisoners. “Okay, behave while we’re gone. If you get loose, then you better skedaddle. Once we’re done, we’ll turn you all loose, but you have to leave the area and not come near Riverwood. And if you think about fighting us again, think about what happened last time.”  
  
There were some murmurs among the outlaws, but it seemed like they were all agreeing that her terms were far more generous than they could expect from anyone else.  
  
“I was thinking of moving down into Falkreath anyways. Slim pickings in these parts.” Most of the man’s fellows agreed to that sentiment immediately. Ruby narrowed her gaze at them and smashed Crescent Rose’s head onto the floor, cracking the stone and gaining everyone’s attention again.  
  
“And if I recognize any of you banditting again, I won’t go easy on you, and I’ll turn you over to the authorities next time. Are we clear?”  
  
They all started vigorously nodding, including their recent outcast.  
  
“Good. Now, we’re going to head into the barrow. Behave,” she reminded them through narrow eyes and a pointed finger before leading the rest of Team RWBY down into the crypts. Weiss paused at the sight of a small bag resting on a casket, then picked it up and began counting the coins inside.  
  
“My savings…” a bandit woman practically cried out, but Weiss didn't care as she pocketed the coins and moved on.  
  
Further inside the barrow, worrying signs were beginning to show themselves. Mostly in the form of giant cobwebs, though there was also the threat of booby traps, which they were warned of thanks to the bloated corpse of another bandit (who didn’t have the Claw on him, nor matched the description of Arvel) with several darts stuck across his body, likely poisoned. The trap he fell for was rather simple as well, being a lock combination that the solution to was literally right in front of them.  
  
“So, does this bring us down to one?” Blake asked as Ruby tried to ignore the body.  
  
“I…suppose,” Weiss figured while pulling her hand away. “Still warm. The darts on him must have been poisoned with something fast-acting and deadly.”  
  
“Terrible stuff if it was still potent enough to kill him after all this time,” the Faunus said while looking at the small opening where the darts were likely fired from.  
  
“Not even from something that complex,” Yang added as she twisted the last pillar into place. She double-checked her work and grabbed the lever. Everyone jumped away after she pulled it, but no darts came and the gate simply opened. The girls walked through, all breathing a sigh of relief. Yang noticed a chain on the other side and pulled it, causing the gate to close again and the pillars to spin a half-turn each. She pulled it again and the gate re-opened.  
  
“Okay, that explains how Arvel could be on this side with the gate still closed.” She pulled it again, and the gate closed once more, though the pillars didn’t turn this time. “Keep the others from following us, at least.”  
  
“Just watch out for more,” Ruby warned them. “If they put in one trap, they could’ve put in dozens.”  
  
More and more cobwebs came into view, giving each of the girls a huge amount of spider-related anxiety. Some smaller ones were seen crawling about, reminding them all of the bigger ones likely scuttling further within.  
  
“Guys, I really don’t want to see any more spiders,” Ruby whimpered. “The first time was enough.”  
  
“I still don’t understand how they get that huge,” Weiss complained while scratching at her head. “It shouldn’t be possible. Unless they evolved lungs here…”  
  
Weiss’ ruminations were halted as a dog-sized spider suddenly crawled out from an alcove. Ruby promptly screamed and shot it, blowing it into hundreds of green and brown pieces.  
  
“Ruby, save your ammo,” Blake admonished the girl.  
  
“Huh, wha?” She seemed confused.  
  
“Guns aren’t really a thing here, and we still haven’t found anyone who sells Dust. Even if we get a supply, we’re going to have to make our own bullets. Kit or not, that takes a while.”  
  
“Oh, geez, I totally forgot!” She then whimpered. “It wasn’t even a big one…”  
  
“It’s okay. Let’s just be conservative about them. Shoot only when you have to.”  
  
“Makes sense,” Yang agreed before heading in front of them. More spiders appeared as they went in further, and the girls thrashed them with only the hesitation brought on by the instinctual fear of arachnids holding them back from a full-on slaughter. As they continued on while trying to settle their nerves, they began to hear something distinctly human.  
  
“Is… Is someone coming?” a small, scared voice called from a little ways forward. “Is that you Harknir? Bjorn? Soling?”  
  
“Think that’s Arvel?” Yang asked in a low voice, referring to the one the bandits at the entrance had mentioned.  
  
“Guess so,” Blake answered.  
  
“I know I ran ahead with the Claw, but I need your help!”  
  
“Sounds like he’s in trouble,” Ruby said as she shifted into hero-mode. “Let’s gooooooo… That’s a lot of web in the way.”  
  
Blake responded by merely slicing her sword through the webbing a few times, clearing a path forward into the chamber.  
  
“Thanks,” Ruby meekly stated as she ducked into the room.  
  
“What? Who are you?” a Dunmer trapped in a thick web at the other side cried. “Oh, never mind. Cut me down before that thing gets us!”  
  
"What 'thing'?" Weiss coldly asked. Suddenly, a spider-shaped shadow filled the room, and everyone froze in place before daring to look up and see a spider the size of a small car. The girls had to force themselves not to scream, although Ruby did whimper slightly. A few wounds covered it, but obviously weren't enough to subdue the creature. If Ruby had to guess, this spider was the mother to the ones they just killed in the previous rooms.  
  
“No! Not again!” Arvel cried out in terror, wriggling in a futile attempt to break free of his bonds.  
  
“Guys, spread out!” Ruby ordered as the spider came down. It let out a chittering hiss and turned towards the leader before Yang came in and punched its side. It moved sideways and turned a bit, but besides a small dent in its exoskeleton, there didn’t seem to be much damage.  
  
“Blake, distract it!”  
  
“Right!” The Faunus jumped forward and sliced at an already injured leg, earning a hiss and splat of green ichor on the floor. It turned toward her and snapped, but only caught air as the clone left in her place disappeared. It seemed stunned, and that gave Ruby an opportunity to make a downward slice at its middle. The creature shrieked and turned, but Ruby was already out of its reach. It thrashed around a bit and then clambered towards Weiss, who screamed in fright and fired out a shower of sparks from her palm. The spider shrieked again but kept going until it had rammed Weiss and pinned her to the wall. The heiress screamed again and stabbed forward with Myrtenaster, hitting the joint between its neck and body. It backed away with a frantic chitter, and then Ruby came in yelling with an upward swing of her scythe. Green fluid spattered out and then the head of the frostbite spider fell off. Green ichor pooled around the severed stump and stained the white snow that had accumulated on the ground, but other than the horrendous smell it posed no threat. Taking a moment to gather their bearings after the death of the arachnid, they approached the Dunmer thief, still suspended in spider silk.  
  
“Well done, really!” he congratulated the four in excitement. “Now, if you could let me down, we could…work together, maybe.”  
  
“Work together?” Weiss skeptically asked with a raised eyebrow. “Why would we work with a scoundrel like you?”  
  
“Also, you guys stole something that doesn’t belong to you,” Ruby added. “We’d like it back.”  
  
“You mean the Claw?" Arvel asked, his face betraying his panic as his wiggling quickened. "Listen, there’s more to that thing than you realize! The Claw, the markings, the door in the Hall of Stories. I know how they all fit together!”  
  
“Fit together?” Blake mused.  
  
“What…do you mean by that, exactly?” Ruby asked.  
  
“See, the Claw…is a key! There’s a room at the end of the Barrow, the oldest part of the whole thing. There’s no telling what secrets are there, what riches await! And you can’t get in without the Claw or the secret I discovered!”  
  
“Okay, so… You want us to go with you?” Ruby asked skeptically.  
  
“You do realize we beat up a whole lot of your buddies, right?” Yang pointed out. “Practically all of them.”  
  
“Sure, but I’m not like the rest of those blood-thirsty Men and Mer. I’m just here to get some gold and go. Who knows, if this whole thing pays off, I could leave behind the whole brigand life and start up anew! And there’ll be plenty for us all! Just think of it!”  
  
The girls all looked to each other and Ruby shrugged.  
  
“Well, no harm in it, I guess,” Blake answered. “It's not like he could hurt us, after all.”  
  
“Okay then. Cut him down, Weiss.”  
  
“Fine,” the heiress grumbled before a short cough. Her throat was beginning to feel dry again, making her grind her teeth. As she cut the spider web from around the Dunmer, she thought about taking a sip from her canteen. Her belly wasn’t full, so she could probably get away with a large gulp or two.  
  
His bonds finally cut, Arvel came loose and dropped to the ground with an ‘oomph’. As he stood and dusted himself, he smiled slightly.  
  
“Sweet breath of Arkay, thank you.” Arvel smiled, still on his knees, only to quickly grab hold of a few strands of webbing and throw it in Weiss' face. As she was distracted and sputtering, Arvel took the chance to flee further into the crypt, speeding off with a laugh. The girls, shocked by his sudden, but in hindsight inevitable, betrayal, looked after him, only to see him knock down a brazier behind him and set the ages-old contents on fire.  
  
“Uh, Arvel?!” Ruby called after him.  
  
“Fools! Why should I share the treasure with anyone?!” he called back, seemingly not aware nor caring of where he was going.  
  
Weiss silently fumed while the other girls just looked among themselves, confused.  
  
“He knows the entrance is behind us, right?” Ruby pondered, her hand on her chin.  
  
“Maybe he thinks there’s a back way?” Blake guessed, trying to make sense of the Dark Elf's intentions.  
  
“Could be, but if there was, why wouldn’t he just use that to get in instead?” Yang rubbed her head before looking to the side. “What do you think, Wei- Where’d Weiss go?”  
  
The other two followed her gaze and saw that their teammate was gone, but after a moment’s listen, they could hear her heels clacking.  
  
“Agh, Weiss! Now we have to chase both of them!” Ruby complained.  
  
“Let’s go get her,” Blake huffed. The three took off after the runaway bandit and their teammate, none of them really in any kind of hurry.  
  


* * *

  
“Get back here, you degenerate!”  
  
“Stendarr’s beard! How?” the bandit cried out when he saw Weiss gaining ground on him despite the heels she was wearing. The heiress, to his shock, soon caught up and violently grasped his arm, yanking him around in a spin that tripped him backwards, before jumping on top of him and holding his arms down, pinning him to the ground.  
  
“Did you think you could just run?!” Weiss yelled in his face, days of irritation and illness, stacked on top of all the aches her body held, having pushed the worst of her to the forefront. “Did you think we’d let you run away?!” she repeated as she grasped his shirt by the collar and pulled his face to hers.  
  
“Please! I’m sorry!” Arvel begged, attempting to reach for a knife at his waist. Weiss saw it and grabbed the knife instead, pulling it up and cutting his arm with the motion. He cried out and clutched the wound, but now looked in fear as his own weapon was pointed at his face.  
  
“I am tired, sick, thirsty…!” Her pupils contracted as she suddenly smelled the metallic scent of blood from the cut going up Arvel's arm. “So…thirsty…” The icy blue of her eyes suddenly shifted into a glowing orange, her mouth opening up to reveal two elongated fangs to the Dunmer, who froze in horror before struggling even harder.  
  
“No! NO!! Someone! Help!”  
  
Weiss’s face came forward and she bit down on the struggling elf’s neck. Liquid flowed into her mouth and down her throat, quenching the thirst she had felt for days. Her mind went into a flutter as Arvel screamed in pain and kept trying to get loose. A futile struggle, as his thrashing form only continued to lose strength with each passing second. When no more liquid was forthcoming, Weiss raised her head up again as she dropped the body, feeling revitalized and back at full strength, like she wasn’t even sick. In fact, Weiss felt better than ever. A smile formed on her ecstatic face as she basked in the moment. Her attention was caught by a gasp and she looked over to see her teammates, all of them looking at her in horror, disgust, and revulsion.  
  
She reached up to her mouth and pulled her hand away to see red, sticky liquid upon her fingers. Shakily, she looked down and saw Arvel’s body, somewhat shriveled like a prune, not even bleeding from the holes in his neck. She gasped for air, her breath leaving her as the situation sunk in.  
  
 _“…looked like a dried-up human, used a sword…”  
  
“Was it…draining your blood?”  
  
Her thirst was making her think -_ she could quench it with mortal blood!  
  
"...Weiss?" Ruby whispered in fearful concern, clutching Crescent Rose like a lifeline.  
  
"What… What did you...do?" Yang asked softly, her eyes wide at the gruesome scene.  
  
"I..." Blake whispered to herself as she looked on with dread. "Weiss...did you...drink…?"  
  
Weiss gripped her hair and screamed.  
  


* * *

  
_15th of Last Seed_


	7. Raiders of the Crypt

Chapter 7: Raiders of the Crypt

* * *

  
  
The white-haired girl kicked back and pushed herself away from the corpse until her back hit the wall. Her stomach churned, but nothing threatened to come out.  
  
“Weiss,” Ruby called out in worry as she approached, Crescent Rose on her back again.  
  
“No! Don’t!” The heiress shouted. “I… I’m a-”  
  
As Weiss cried and pushed herself further into the corner of the room, Blake frantically reached into her pack and pulled out a small book she had purchased, "Diseases and Treatments". She flipped over to the page on Blood Rot and looked through the symptoms. All of them matched what Weiss had been feeling, but there was something else that she was missing here. She flipped through page after page. Brain Rot, Cannibal's Prion -she winced at that one- Cholera, Consumption, Corprus. She kept flipping through, glancing at the symptoms and trying to figure out what could have done this to her friend. She stopped somewhere in the S's when she saw something that matched her symptoms up until today almost exactly.  
  
' **Sanguinare Vampiris'**  
 _A vampire disease, most commonly contracted in Skyrim. While rarer than **Poryphoric Hemophilia** , **Sanguinare** is noted for being harder to detect due to its similarities to other diseases. It can be transferred via the bite of a vampire, and, should it have three days to incubate, the infected will die and reawaken as a vampire. See **Vampirism**_  
  
Paling, Blake flipped over slowly to the correct page.  
  
 **‘Vampirism’**  
 _Those afflicted with vampirism are, essentially, cursed undead. They are harmed by sunlight and are susceptible to fire, in some cases they are repelled by holy elements. There are many strains of vampirism, but all of them are descended from Molag Bal and curse the soul as well as the body. All vampires have an innate thirst for blood that only strengthens as time goes on. Feeding will revitalize them and sate them for a few days, while starving gives them a more monstrous appearance. If there are any reliable cures, then they are not known at this time._  
  
Blake gulped. How was she supposed to explain this to the others?  
  
"Blake?" Yang called as she waved a hand before her partners eyes. Ruby was trying to talk Weiss down, but the heiress was still screaming at them to get away, grasping her hair tightly with at least one hand. Her legs were still kicking, as if trying to push her through the wall.  
  
"I... I think I know what happened to Weiss," she explained quietly. "It's not Blood Rot." She handed over the book to Yang, who quickly scanned through the paragraph, and then looked up with eyes as wide as saucers.  
  
"No..."  
  
"Weiss," Ruby tried again.  
  
"I don't..." she choked out through her tears. “I don't want to hurt you! Please...."  
  
"Weiss, you're not going to hurt us!" Blake yelled, catching her attention. Her screams stopped for a moment and were replacing by frantic breaths. "I just... You have vampirism. It's...hard to explain, but it's another disease. You... You just drank. You aren't going to feel thirsty again for a while."  
  
Her eyes looked over at the book in Yang's hand. Blake saw how they shifted from golden yellow to icy blue for a moment, then back into gold.  
  
"Hand me," she started before clearing her throat. "Hand me the book."  
  
Yang started walking forward, but Weiss flinched, stopping her.  
  
"T- Toss it!"  
  
Yang tossed the tome to her underhanded, and the heiress caught it before rapidly flipping through pages. When she stopped near the end, Blake unconsciously held her breath as her eyes scanned the contents thoroughly. A grimace returned to her face as tears pooled again. "No," she quietly muttered as she dropped the book. "No. No. This can't... This can't be happening." Her legs curled up with her knees pressed into her forehead as she started sobbing quietly. Blake looked on broken-hearted while Yang seemed to lose all luster. Ruby looked back to them and then at her partner. She went down to her knees beside her and put a hand on one of her legs. Weiss looked up at her and sniffed, tears running down her face. As she opened her mouth to say something, she went silent as Ruby threw herself forward and wrapped her into a hug, squeezing her tightly against her.  
  
“It’s okay,” the younger girl whispered. “It’ll be all right.”  
  
Weiss just seemed to stare forward for a minute in silence before her own arms rose up and wrapped around Ruby as well. Her eyes closed slowly, and then another pair of arms went around them both. She looked over to see Yang smiling faintly at her before setting her forehead to hers for a moment. Another pair came and they all looked to see Blake  
  
For a while the team sat there, taking comfort in each others’ presence. Somehow, despite everything, they felt that it was going to be all right in the end.

* * *

Each of them had read over the portion of the book on vampirism at least twice now. Weiss herself was reading it her third time when Ruby spoke up.  
  
"Weiss, are...you alright?"  
  
"No, Ruby. I'm not alright," Weiss answered, taking a break from her reading and noticeably distant from the others. "I just found out that I'm undead, have a constant need to drink people's blood, run the risk of losing control of myself and killing you all, and it turns out that there is no cure for my condition, so I'm stuck like this until I die, which might never happen as apparently vampirism makes you immortal to age, disease, and possibly starvation. So yeah, I'm pretty far from alright."  
  
"Weiss, I..."  
  
"But I'll manage, like I always have," Weiss concluded before she sighed and went back to reading over the symptoms again. Ruby looked at Weiss in concern before her expression hardened into one of pure determination.  
  
"We're going to find the cure."  
  
The heiress was jolted from reading over the symptoms a third time and sighed. “Ruby, it’s not that simple.”  
  
“Maybe not, but we can definitely do it. Besides, the book says there aren’t any reliable cures known. That means someone might know about unreliable cures, or maybe someone found a cure since?”  
  
“This book could be pretty old,” Blake pointed out.  
  
Weiss shook her head, tears welling up. “You guys…”  
  
“Hey, uh, heads up about what’s up ahead,” Yang warned after peering forward. “You guys ever been to a mausoleum?”  
  
“Oh, how terrible can it be?” Weiss asked in irritation before walking forward and then stopping. “What the...?”  
  
The other girls looked into the next room to see what looked like dried corpses sitting in various shelf-like holes in the walls. Some were wrapped in ancient linens while some were left exposed, only clothing and armor on them. A few had weapons resting on their chests, likely indicating that they had been warriors in life.  
  
“They just…left them out,” Ruby said as she gazed around. “Are they like mummies?”  
  
“Kinda,” Yang guessed uncertainly. “I don’t think anyone’s used this thing recently. These guys have probably been up here for centuries.” She suddenly grasped Weiss’s arm as the girl tried to head forward. “Whoa there! Careful.” She picked up the lid off an urn and threw it forward. It hit a raised flagstone, and then suddenly a spiked grate swung forward, slamming against a wall before slowly swinging back into place.  
  
“Right. Traps,” Weiss hissed. Blake walked up while looking through Arvel’s notebook and staring at the palm of the Golden Claw, noting three symbols etched on. She hummed and put the Claw back into her pack.  
  
“So, we’ve got to watch out for traps? Just be careful from here out.” Ruby started looking at one of the battleaxes resting on a mummified warrior. “Wow, this thing barely has any-” A hand shot out and grabbed her leg, and the girl screamed while leaping back and landing against her sister.  
  
“Ruby?!”  
  
“It grabbed me!”  
  
“Don’t be silly,” her partner admonished with a chuckle. “There’s no way-”  
  
A growl came from the mummy as dust launched from its mouth. Its eye sockets began to glow blue as it rose from its place as though simply waking from bed, taking its axe in hands and facing the girls.  
  
“I’m sorry!” Ruby cried out an apology.  
  
“What…is…?” Weiss began.  
  
“Undead,” Blake muttered. Her ears twitched and then she looked over to see three others rising up. “They’re undead!”  
  
“How?” Yang shouted as she readied Ember Cilica.  
  
“I don’t know!”  
  
One of the mummies came forward, lashing out with an ancient sword. Yang deflected the strike and punched the undead, sending it backwards into another. The one nearest them swung its ax, only to be dodged.  
  
“ **Dir volaan**!” it shouted.  
  
“We didn’t mean to!” Ruby yelled as she pulled Crescent Rose out.  
  
“Ruby, I don’t think you’re going to convince them!” her sister shouted as she whacked that one back as well. The four approached as one and the girls readied themselves.  
  
“Okay, there seems to be magic coming from behind the eyes!” Weiss observed.  
  
“Try to remove the heads!” Ruby reasoned as she dodged another axe swing. “Like zombies!” She whipped Crescent Rose forward and pulled it behind a mummy’s knees, tripping it onto its back. With a twirl, she stabbed down into its head. The light in its eyes vanished and the corpse stilled. “It works!”  
  
Weiss squared herself with a sword-wielding mummy and parried its swing before jabbing Myrtenaster’s end into one socket. The mummy twitched before it fell to the ground with a clack. Blake, meanwhile, dashed forward and swiped the head off of another, while Yang reared back and punched forward, smashing in the face of the last mummy. As it fell, Ruby noticed some kind of slime on the end of her scythe’s blade and made a noise of disgust.  
  
“These things are gross,” she complained as she took out a cloth and wiped the slime away.  
  
“How are dead things even walking around like this?” Yang asked as she kicked at one of them.  
  
“Magic, I’d assume,” Weiss explained. “I went over a lot of magical subjects with Cynrrbert. One that really sounded interesting was the School of Conjuration. Essentially, it allows people to conjure things, normally from something called Oblivion. You can summon weapons, familiar spirits, even beings. But another branch of it is necromancy. He was going to explain some political disputations about it, but decided it wasn’t important.”  
  
“Let me guess. “Never mind for now”?”  
  
Weiss huffed. “Yes, yes. At least he stops his tangents. Anyways, necromancy is simply putting magic into a dead body and making it…do things. Unskilled mages tend to ‘burn out’ the body and they end up turning the reanimated corpse into ashes from the inside out. But skilled necromancers can revive a corpse for an unspecified amount of time. I think such a necromancer might have made these mummies into their thralls and then simply set them as a security measure for the barrow.”  
  
“Makes sense, I guess.” Ruby tentatively picked up the ancient axe and looked it over. “Man, this must have been an amazing blade at the time. It’s held an edge for centuries!”  
  
Weiss shook her head and chuckled. “You are something else, I swear. Your partner’s cursed, and you say you’re going to cure her. We get attacked by reanimated mummies, and you’re looking at their weapons.”  
  
Ruby smiled and placed the axe down. “Well, being upset’s not getting us anywhere. So, what do you guys think? Should we try to find this, uh, Hall of Stories and the treasure, or go back?”  
  
“We came this far,” Blake argued in defense of going forward. “And, honestly, the mummies aren’t too much of a problem.”  
  
“After all of this, we deserve some treasure,” Yang complained.  
  
Weiss just nodded when their leader looked at her. Ruby grinned brightly.  
  
“Aaaaaaaallllllll right! Treasure hunters, forward!”  
  
“Ruby! Trap!” Weiss shouted when she stepped on the raised flagstone. Ruby dashed back in a flurry of petals with an ‘eep’ and into Weiss’s arms as the spike gate slammed at her. She laughed nervously and rubbed her neck.  
  
“Forgot about that thing.”  
  
Weiss let her go and the younger girl landed on her feet. “What would you do without us?”  
  
The team proceeded to the next room, where more mummies came up only to be soundly defeated in moments. A metallic shifting noise could be heard, and when they looked down a narrow hall, they could see pendulums swiping back and forth every couple seconds.  
  
“Okay, how are we…” Yang paused when she saw Ruby speed through to the other side during a gap in the swings. “Rubes,” she admonished.  
  
“It’s okay. There’s a chain thing here.” She reached up and pulled on the chain, and the pendulums stopped. “See?”  
  
“Well, that makes it simpler,” Weiss said as she walked through cautiously. They continued through a winding hall with more mummies coming up once in a while. Past that was an underground stream with a waterfall and a bridge across it. A standing coffin popped open and another mummy walked out from it while hefting a sword. Yang sighed as she approached it and knocked its head off.  
  
“These things are getting a little annoying.”  
  
“Ooh, treasure chest,” Ruby marveled as she opened an old chest on a pedestal. “Ugh, just some cents!” She pulled out the partially corroded coppers and pocketed them. “And a rusty helmet. Hey, did you guys notice that the money is here is almost exactly like the current stuff? Like, the only thing different with this is that instead of a dude's face on it, there's a dragon head.”  
  
“It is odd that they haven’t changed the currency in what must be at least a thousand years,” Weiss agreed before getting back to the matter at hand. “Where do we go from here?”  
  
“Only way is through there,” Blake stated as she pulled at another chain that opened a rusty grate. The stream led them all down, though Weiss groaned at having her feet get wet.  
  
“You’d think they’d have a path that didn’t lead through a stream,” she complained as they turned into a narrow cave that expanded into a wider one.  
  
“It might have come up after they built it,” Blake guessed. “See, I doubt they planned for that one either.” She pointed over to another stream coming from above and joining the other one into a larger flow of water.  
  
“Hey, that over there looks open to the sky.” Ruby rushed over to where some snow had gathered and stuck her head out to look upwards. “Whoa! It’s a big hole!”  
  
The others, except for Weiss who stayed out of the sunlight, joined her before they turned and started walking along the path. A mummy was quickly slapped off the natural bridge, and they reentered the cave system.  
  
“You know, it’s kinda impressive how far these guys dug,” Yang stated. “Couldn’t have been done all at once, either.”  
  
“Normally how such a crypt would work is that they dig further as time goes on,” Weiss explained. “So it’s likely the deeper we are the newer the place is.”  
  
The cave gave way to temple once again as ancient masonry reasserted itself as the primary feature. A mummy stood guard, but this time Blake was the one to take it down with a quick slice removing its head. A large set of double doors were behind it, which they pushed open and entered. After some more bends and impressive carvings, they heard a familiar noise.  
  
“Another pendulum trap?” Weiss asked as it came into view. “Does anyone else feel like this is a bit much?”  
  
“I honestly don’t know what I expected,” Blake responded as Ruby dashed through again like last time. As they came through, Ruby pulled out Crescent Rose and sliced through a mummy that had awoken when she got close.  
  
“Sorry,” she mumbled to the others, and then ducked as an arrow flew at her head. More mummies had taken to arms at the other side of the complex looking room. Weiss responded by trying to fire lightning at them, but her attempts arced downwards only a dozen feet away from her.  
  
“Guess we’re not ready for long distance,” Yang quipped before running forward to the archer mummy. Weiss closed in with another and tried her lightning again, and this time filled the undead with electricity. It spasmed in place for a moment and then fell over steaming. Weiss grinned at her accomplishment, but flinched back when a body fell from above next to her.  
  
“My bad,” Blake called down.  
  
“Honestly…”  
  
The next room had another set of doors, behind which was a long hallway, on the walls of which were carved murals and inscriptions. The girls looked at them in awe as they continued forward, but then all of their focus went to the intricate carving at the very end.  
  
“The door?” Yang asked.  
  
“The door in the Hall of Stories,” Ruby mused as she looked over at the murals. “This must be it. Blake, what do we do?”  
  
Blake took out the Claw and looked at it again. “The notes say that "When you have the golden claw, the solution is in the palm of your hands."” She looked at the door and began pushing the circles on it, moving the animal carvings around until they were ordered from top to bottom with a bear, moth, and owl. She pushed the claw into an indention in the center, fitting its points in and then pushed a little more. The stone in the center suddenly shifted in. She gasped, and tried turning it a little one way, then the other. The whole door began creaking, and Blake backed away with the Claw in hand as the door seemed to sink into the ground.  
  
"Incredible... After all this time it still works..." Weiss gasped in amazement, echoing the rest of her teammates’ thoughts.  
  
They walked up the stairs revealed behind the door and looked into a cavern where a large stone platform with stairs leading up to and sitting next to it stood, an iron coffin on one end and a large, curved wall with carvings and inscriptions upon it at the other. Some bats flew out as the approached, frightening them for but a moment before they continued onwards.  
  
“So, does this look valuable to anyone?” Yang asked as she looked around inside of a chest, showing them a few gems.  
  
“Yes, of course!” Weiss responded as she began going through it as well. “This will definitely be worth a small fortune!”  
  
"I see your inner 'Schnee' has emerged..." Blake smirked, only to be ignored by Weiss, who had begun stockpiling all the gems into her bag.  
  
Ruby, however, continued to look around the cavern until she felt a sudden draw pull her towards the curved wall. She could swear she almost heard something as she neared the construct. The words on the wall seemed to glow to her, and she began to mumble.  
  
“Het…nok…faal vahlok…” she muttered.  
  
“Rubes?” Yang asked when she noticed her sister staring at the wall intently. “Ruby? Are you all right?”  
  
“Het nok faal vahlok deinmaar do…”  
  
“What’s going on?” Blake wondered.  
  
“Is she reading that? What is-”  
  
The world began to shake as Ruby’s voice rose. “ **HET NOK FaaL VahLok DeiNMaaR DO DOVAahGOLZ ahRK aaN FUS DO UNSLaaD RahGOL ahRK VULOM**!” she boomed as misty tendrils reached from the wall and into her. **_“Here lies the Guardian, Keeper of the Dragonstone, And a Force of unending Rage and Darkness!”_**  
  
“Ruby?!” Yang shouted, finally pulling her sister’s attention away.  
  
“Huh, wha? What’s up, Yang?”  
  
Before Yang could ask Ruby the same question, there was a loud bang that came from behind them. The girls turned to see the lid on the iron coffin falling into the stream next to the platform. As they readied themselves for what was about to happen, a mummy rose up, wearing more filled out armor and a horned helm. It looked over to them, and stood straight.  
  
“Getting real tired of these things,” the brawler ground out.  
  
“ **Fus** …” the mummy growled, “ **RO DAH**!”  
  
A wave of tangible force came at the girls and hit them. Ruby and Blake were sent backwards, but Yang was able to stand her ground while Weiss held herself steady by stabbing her rapier into the floor. Blake jumped back from the wall, while Ruby stopped herself from hitting it too hard.  
  
“The hell?” Yang cried out as the mummy raised its sword and charged them. She punched at it, only for her blows to get blocked. The mummy slashed and she tried to deflect it, just for her gauntlets to get iced over. “It’s got an ice sword!” she warned.  
  
Weiss came in and began slashing and stabbing towards it, but it was able to match her movements as well. It surprised her with a punch that sent her back before trying to stab her, but luckily her Aura took the hit and she was only sent rolling. Blake went for a kick, only for her leg to be caught and then for her to be thrown to the side.  
  
“Guys, hold up!” Ruby called out as she came in, squaring up to the mummy and holding its attention. “This one’s tougher than the rest! Weiss, get your lightning ready! Blake, rock clone! Yang, get ready for a fastball!”  
  
“Right!” her sister cheered while punching her fists together, shattering the ice on them.  
  
Blake jumped to the side and swung at the mummy only to be blocked, but when it went for a retaliatory strike, its blade sunk in through her shoulder, only for her body to suddenly turn to stone. The real Blake reappeared and stabbed through both its arms.  
  
“Weiss!” she called out.  
  
The heiress nodded and ran forward as electrical energy built up in her hands. She shouted as she released the lightning at near point blank into the mummy, while at the same time Blake jumped clear. The living corpse spasmed as the magical voltage coursed through it. Meanwhile, Yang had lifted Ruby up by her arm and leg and activated her Semblance, basking the cave in a fiery light.  
  
“Here…goes!” she yelled as she twisted and threw her sister as hard as she could. Weiss ended her spell with a gasp and jumped back out of the way as Ruby sped through, hooking her scythe under the chin of the mummy. She planted her feet firmly upon the ground and pulled as hard as she could, slicing through mummified flesh and brittle bone. The team watched for a moment as the mummy stood still, and then the magical light left its eyes and it fell, its head rolling for a moment before stopping next to its helmet.  
  
Ruby let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding and smiled at her team. “That wasn’t so bad.”  
  
“Compared to the others, though, this one was tough,” Yang argued. “Like, on a whole ‘nother level.”  
  
Seeing how the danger had passed, Blake looked in the coffin it had sprung up from while Ruby started looking over its sword after yanking it loose from its now fully dead hands. “Hey, there’s some kind of tablet in here,” she told them as she picked up said stone. “Looks like a map.” She turned it in her hands and saw the inscriptions on the back side of it. “There’s something written on here. Looks like the same script on the wall.” She looked over to Ruby, and then at Yang, who glanced over at her sister as well.  
  
“What?” the young leader queried as she took her attention away from the ancient sword.  
  
“Ruby…do you mind taking a look at this?”  
  
“Uh, sure I guess.” Ruby took the tablet from Blake and looked it over. She hummed a bit and squinted. “Het nok un…mahlaan drogge…erei suleyk se…Alduin vokrii.”  
  
“Okay, in Vytalian?” Yang asked.  
  
“What? I just did.” Ruby perked up her eyebrow in confusion. At this, the others glanced at each other before Yang continued.  
  
“I don’t know how you’re reading that, but when you read the wall, you said it in Vytalian after…whatever that was.”  
  
“It was really out there,” Weiss added. “Maybe…it’s some sort of magic wall that gave you the ability to read their ancient script?”  
  
"If that is the case, then why was only Ruby affected?" Blake pointed out.  
  
"Maybe because she was the closest, I don't know! Do I look like the magic expert here?"  
  
"Compared to us, yes," Yang confirmed, causing Weiss to throw out her arms in exasperation. As she did so, Ruby reread the stone.  
  
“I still don’t… No, wait, I can see it now.” She squinted again. “I didn’t even realize it wasn’t… So, what did I say? Uh, just now, I mean.”  
  
“Het notch something or other,” her sister answered with a wave of her hand. “It all sounded like gibberish to me.”  
  
“Het…” Ruby took a moment to mull it over in her mind. “’Here lies…our fallen lords until…the power of Alduin…revives.”  
  
The team looked over at the tablet again as they thought about the translation. “So…it’s a map to burial sites?” Yang thought aloud.  
  
“Possibly other barrows like this one,” Weiss guessed as she began to pace. “Assuming the others on the map are similar to this one, each would have a sort of key, leading to an inner chamber like this, with more clues to finding…something. I wouldn’t be surprised if this stone was a part of a puzzle that led to something…big.”  
  
“Sounds like video game logic,” Blake countered.  
  
“No, it’s fantasy logic. Which, given everything else around here, makes perfect sense in this situation. The mummies, the traps, the magical reading enchantment that’s now made Ruby the key to finding the rest of these things…”  
  
“Oh boy! I read one thing and…” Ruby muttered.  
  
“…It’s all part of some ancient culture’s scheming test to make sure whatever being finds their lost artifact, treasure, or what have you is worthy of holding it," Weiss started to crescendo at this point, while her team stared at her with blank looks. “We have displayed cunning and strength to get this far, and the others may hold more tests yet for us as we-”  
  
“Or we could put it in a museum,” Yang pointed out. “We don’t _have_ to go on a big treasure hunting quest.”  
  
“Besides, you could be totally wrong and it just leads to some normal graves,” Ruby tacked on.  
  
“Not to mention one or more of them could have collapsed,” Blake bet. “We saw a few hallways that were inaccessible on the way here. It’s likely at least one of them totally caved in.”  
  
Weiss groaned in disappointment.  
  
“Don’t worry Weiss,” Ruby bubbled as she went over and patted her shoulder. “We can still find someone who knows about this stuff and they might tell us more. And I promise we’ll look at one of them, at least.”  
  
“I still think I’m right,” she objected. At this, Ruby smiled.  
  
“Now, let’s check out the next room!”  
  
“Maybe we should go back,” Blake retorted.  
  
“But this might be where ALL of the treasure is at,” Ruby called as she hopped up the steps and into the cave tunnel. The others followed her in and looked to see her opening a hidden door after pulling on some handle.  
  
“Oh, so there was a back way.”  
  
“A _secret_ back way,” Ruby whispered while ducking and moving her hands out. Yang felt a little regret taking her to see that cheesy spy movie as her sister sped forward ahead of them, stopping at a chest next to a shrine set in a recess and opening it. “Yep, more jewels! And a gauntlet!” She pulled out the piece of armor and checked inside of it before putting it on her right hand. “Neat! I wonder what kind of metal this is. It looks like bronze, but it isn’t corroded at all. Geez, how did these guys make this stuff last this long?”  
  
“Huh, that is pretty cool,” Yang agreed before looking forward. “And it looks like we found our way out.”  
  
After bagging all of the gems, the girls walked back outside to find themselves on a high rise at the side of the mountain. Weiss, with a wince, threw her cloak over her head as the sun hit her.  
  
“Feeling okay?” Blake asked her.  
  
“Better. Sunlight still bothers me, but… I don’t feel as bad.” She grimaced and shook a little.  
  
Blake dropped the subject there and looked across the distance. There was a lake nearby, fed by the river, and across it was a green, piney forest.  
  
“It looks beautiful, doesn’t it?”  
  
“…Yes, it does.”  
  
“Hey, look, a mammoth skeleton,” Ruby pointed out to the side of them. The young girl hopped down and went over to take a closer look at it. “I wonder if we’ll see a live one.”  
  
“We could…sell the tusks,” Weiss explained as she followed along. “Ivory should be fairly valuable. And it makes for beautiful carvings.”  
  
“Huh, yeah. It’d make a good hilt.” Ruby yanked a tusk loose and yelped as she fell back. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”  
  
“Riverwood would be up the river from here, right?” Blake asked. “You think they have a boat or something we could use at that dock over there? I just…do _not_ feel like walking all the way back.”  
  
“We could ask, I suppose,” Ruby answered as she got back to her feet. “Might be quicker too. It looks… I don’t know. But it’s past noon. We should get back before nightfall to be safe. Oh! We’ve got to get all those bandits we caught!”  
  
“Don’t worry Rubes. They’ll be fine,” her sister reckoned.

* * *

“Thanks for the lift!” Ruby cheerfully told the boatman. Weiss handed him two septims and he nodded to them.  
  
“Aye, no worries, lasses,” he said while tying his boat to the dock. He’d be leaving in the morning with some wood for his fence he was building, as he told them, and staying at the inn overnight.  
  
“Well, glad to see you all back,” Cynrrbert greeted as they came into town. “A totally different direction than the one you went in though. I guess it was quite the adventure.”  
  
“Well, we took down the bandits,” Weiss answered proudly. “Several of them are tied up at the barrow’s entrance. And I finally got the basics of lightning magic down!” She held out a hand and several sparks flew from her fingers, singeing some grass.  
  
“Whoa! Careful with the magic!” a passing man said. “Don’t want you burning any houses down!”  
  
“S-sorry!”  
  
“Ah, well done. Told you it was easy, didn’t I?”  
  
“It certainly came in handy. By the way, do you know what causes those mummies we faced in the barrow?”  
  
“Mummies?” A confused look crossed the mage's face before his eyes widened in realization. “Ah, you must mean the draugr. Same thing I suppose, but most Nords are going to call them that. Hm, can’t say I know what exactly causes them, but there are all sorts of examples of undead just happening for seemingly no reason. There’s an old legend that says draugrs are the people who worshipped the dragons back when they ruled Skyrim, cursed to never find rest, but it sounds like hogwash to me. More likely a security measure installed by necromancers back in the day.”  
  
“Yes, that’s what I thought too. Oh, we also found something in there. Ruby, do you have that stone?”  
  
Ruby looked from where Yang and Gerdur were talking about the bandits and started going through her satchel. “Uh, sure, yeah. Here you go.” She handed it over to Weiss, who showed it to the mage.  
  
“Do you have any idea what this could be?”  
  
“Hm, can’t rightly say. I think that’s Dragon script, though.”  
  
“Dragon script?” Weiss questioned with a raised eyebrow.  
  
“I can’t tell you too much. Dragons were never too interesting to me. Well, not since I was a boy anyways. What little lad doesn’t dream of slaying a dragon in his youth? However, there is a man rather experienced with dragon apocrypha. Farengar, the Court Wizard of Whiterun. You’re headed that way anyways, right?”  
  
“That…is incredibly coincidental.” She looked back at the tablet and hummed in thought. “Say, do you know if there’s any sort of enchantment that could make it to where someone could read this?”  
  
“I’m guessing you ran into such a thing.”  
  
“Ruby did. Suddenly she was able to read this same sort of script on a wall, but didn’t even notice when she did. Then she could read this tablet. She said it was something like ‘here lie our fallen lords, until…something revives them’.”  
  
“Well, it’s not outside the realm of possibilities that something could’ve given her the ability to read it. I’ve heard of stranger things happening in the Ayleid and Dwemer ruins. Heh, Farengar might want to take her on as an assistant if the ability turns out to be long-lasting or permanent. Maybe even those monks on… Never mind that. Well, I suppose I’ll be taking off as well, soon. Headed south to Cyrodiil. Want any more pointers before we part ways?”  
  
“Yes, that would be excellent.”

* * *

“All right. We’ll send Faendal, Hod, and Sven to watch them overnight, and then bring up a wagon to cart them all back to the prison in the morning,” Gerdur agreed. “You’ve got some chains lying around, Alvor?”  
  
“A few. Making a few more before supper won’t be any trouble. I’ll add them to your tab then.”  
  
“All right. Then that’s taken care of,” Ruby sighed. “Blake got Lucan his Claw back, and we’ll be heading to Whiterun tomorrow. I can’t thank you guys enough for helping us out while we’re here.”  
  
“You kidding?” Gerdur started. “You cleared two of the biggest threats to our village for miles, and you’re going out of your way to get us help from the Jarl. If anything, we owe you much more.”  
  
“Aw, shucks, we’re just doing the right thing.” Ruby twisted her toes in the dirt while blushing a little.  
  
“Heh,” Alvor laughed. “If a few more people did the right thing like this more often, we wouldn’t have any worries at all.”  
  
“Take it from us, girl. You’ve done Riverwood a huge favor, and you’ve promised to do even more. You’ll always have a spot at our village, even if I have to toss out some people from the inn. Speaking of which, I think there are some people waiting to celebrate. Your sister already went there.”

* * *

Yang gulped down the honey-made beverage and then slammed the mug down. The people around her cheered and then her opponent downed his own mug, though noticeably slower. He slammed it down and the crowd cheered again, though a few went quiet when he lurched a bit, but swallowed back.  
  
“I! Know when I’m! Beaten!” he shouted while throwing a sack of coins on the table. The crowd whooped and hollered and Yang celebrated by down a final victory mug.  
  
“Hey, Delphy!” she called across the inn. “Put some on me!” And she tossed the innkeeper her newly earned coins.  
  
“As long as it’s paid for,” she said while catching it. “All right, first come, first served!”  
  
The group went over for their free drinks and Yang laughed at the tingly feeling going through her.  
  
“Yang!” her little sister balked when she saw her. “It’s only been an hour!”  
  
“Aw, I just had to celebrate with these guys though! Besides, I got offered a bunch of free drinks. It’d be rude to say no.”  
  
“Did it _have_ to be alcohol?” she groaned with puffed out cheeks. Yang just laughed uproariously and brought her sister in for a hug.  
  
“Oh, dou’re adorable, sis," Yang slurred, the alcohol finally getting to her. "Lesh go get Weissy and Blakey. Blake’s ‘upposed to get the gems sold to the carrot van and Weiss is magicking stuff.”  
  
“Yang, you’re drunk.”  
  
“Wah? Really?”

* * *

“Well, today’s been…” Weiss searched for the right word, but could only find one. “Eventful.”  
  
“At least things should calm down tomorrow,” Ruby said. “We’ll just be taking a trip with the Khajiits to Whiterun.”  
  
“Hey, hey Blake,” their drunk teammate called out. “You should…let you ears out! Heh? Heh? They won’t mind. They might even…like, I dunno, like you more er somethin’?”  
  
“I know they won’t mind, but…” Blake honestly couldn’t think of a reason to _not_ let the Khajiit know, but she wasn’t as sure about the other peoples. “After we leave. And I’m keeping a hat around in case we come across humans.”  
  
“You realize you don’t need to make promises to someone while they’re drunk, right?” Weiss asked.  
  
“Yang’s memory is actually pretty good when she drinks,” Ruby explained. “I think she gets it from our uncle’s side. He’s like that too.” At the mention of her uncle, a forlorn expression flashed across Ruby's face before quickly going back to normal.  
  
“As long as she doesn’t do this _too_ often.” Weiss stretched out her arms and went over to the bed she’d be using. “If that’s everything though, maybe we should start turning in. We’ve got an early start tomorrow.” She pulled out a vial and uncorked it before downing the contents.  
  
“Weiss! You don’t need that!”  
  
“We need to keep up appearances,” the heiress explained as she recorked it and set it aside. “Besides, it’ll help me sleep.” She dug herself up under the blanket and sighed. Following her lead, Ruby helped a giggling, drunk Yang to her bed before moving into hers, with Blake doing the same. After a few moments of silence, a small voice sounded off.  
  
"Hey, Weiss..."  
  
"Yes, Ruby..." the heiress groggily responded.  
  
"On the stone...it said something about an 'Alduin'. Do you know anything about that?"  
  
"No, Ruby... Probably just some ancient necromancer..." With that, Weiss turned back to go to sleep.  
  
"…What do you think is going on back home? In Vale? Beacon?"  
  
"I… I don't know. The Vytal Tournament was about to start, so…competing in that is probably outside the realm of possibility..."  
  
"Yeah…Pyrrha was probably going to win that, anyway."  
  
"Sez you!" Yang interjected, still following along despite her drunken condition. "I cud take 'er!"  
  
"Heh, not like that you can't. Jaune might be able to beat you in that state," Blake cracked, with giggles responding as Yang performed an obscene gesture with an outstretched finger while smirking. After a short round of giggles, a silence descended once again.  
  
"I imagine that people are probably wondering where we are," Weiss stated. "Ozpin, Ironwood, my father…"  
  
"Knowing Jaune and Sun, you can count JNPR and SSSN in that list as well," Ruby added before going silent. "Do you-"  
  
"Yes, we will," Weiss answered the incoming question, resolute. "I promise you that we will get back home. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, it may not even be in a year, but we will go home."  
  
"Just like we'll find you a cure," Ruby smiled. "Thank you, Weiss."  
  
"No problem, Ruby," With that, a silence descended upon the team, only to be broken by a loud snore from a passed out Yang. Another round of giggles sounded off.  
  
“Well, with that wondrous addition by Yang, good night guys,” the leader said to her team, blowing out her candle.  
  
“Good night,” they all told one another.  
  
  



	8. Whiterunning Them Ragged

**Chapter 8: Whiterunning Them Ragged**

* * *

Not many people were up when the girls and the caravan departed, but Dorthe had made sure to get up in time with them to see them off with her family. Hadvar was readying to leave back to Solitude, and it seemed Ralof had left for Windhelm sometime while they were at the barrow. Approaching with a sheathed sword in hand, Alvor handed it to Ruby, who pulled out the blade and immediately recognized it.  
  
“The sword I made?”  
  
“Consider it a gift. While you’re in Whiterun, see if you can get ahold of Eorlund Gray-Mane. Show it to him, and let him know you made it. I can only hope he sees the potential in you.”  
  
“You’ll be the best if he teaches you!” Dorthe added with a smile. “Papa’s good, but Eorlund makes the weapons for the Companions. They’re kinda like heroes.”  
  
“I’ll be sure to look him up,” Ruby promised with a smile as she tied the sword to her side. “But you better do your best too.”  
  
“I will! Definitely!”  
  
Laughing, Ruby turned to look at her team and the caravan. The caravan was beginning to move, Senche and Senche-raht drawing carts along with a handful of horse drawn ones. Her team had gotten seats in one of the emptier carts, along with a practical litter of cubs sitting around them. Weiss was currently cooing over the kittens, while Blake was admonishing a hungover Yang.  
  
"...not so loud, please. My head is still ringing..." Yang whimpered.  
  
"Well, whose fault is that?" Blake pointed out with a smirk.  
  
"Mine..."  
  
"That's what you get for drinking so much last night," Weiss voice rang out, disapproving. "Maybe next time you'll think better. Don't want to be a bad influence to these _adorable little kittens! Oh, yes you are! Yes you are!_ "  
  
"It's like Zwei all over again..." Yang laughed before wincing.  
  
"No, not like Zwei. This is better," Blake obviously disagreed, to which Yang laughed again. Giggling at her team’s antics, Ruby turned to look back at Alvor.  
  
“Well, I guess we’re going. We’ll get the Earl to send you those guards!”  
  
“Jarl,” Alvor corrected with a laugh as Ruby took off and jumped onto the cart. She waved back at them, and the few folk of Riverwood up at that hour waved back.

* * *

At Yang’s insistence, Blake took off her bow once they were clear of the village, though kept a hat nearby as she said she would. The Khajiit didn’t show much interest or surprise besides a few sideways glances. One cub had tried climbing her to lick her ears, but that same cub seemed to be climbing everything it could.  
  
“Okay, focus. Focus… There you go!” Yang cheered.  
  
Weiss looked in the small mirror at her eyes, back to their natural icy blue, and sighed.  
  
“Never dreamed I’d end up with chromatomorphic eyes. You know, I actually have a butler like that back home, only he has seven different colors.” She smiled at the memories of home. “Klein used to use them to cheer me up when I was younger.”  
  
“Whoa, seven?” Yang was a little impressed by that. “I thought three was a lot.”  
  
“Three?” Blake asked as she pulled the little, long-armed cub off of her once again.  
  
“Oh, Yang’s eyes turn blue when she’s sad,” Ruby explained as she dangled a ribbon in front of two cubs, one of them still quite small. Both clawed at it, showing that the bigger one had thumbs on his paws.  
  
“I never saw that. Then again, have I ever seen you sad?” Weiss wondered aloud.  
  
Yang shrugged, and then a cub hopped into her lap. One look at it told her dislodging it would not be worth the hassle, so she began petting the toddler-kitty, earning a purr. “You guys should not be allowed to be this cute.”  
  
A Pahmar-raht plodded up next to their wagon and looked over at the girls. “This one was meaning to ask you four,” he began. “Usually we make for a hunting trip between towns. Would these like to assist us in finding game?”  
  
“Well, I don’t mind,” Ruby answered. “What do you guys think?”  
  
“Eh, could be fun,” her sister, still petting the kitten, said.  
  
“I’m not much for it, but we should give back a little,” Weiss agreed without making eye contact. She was still new to the eye changing, and didn't want to risk being found out.  
  
Blake just nodded, right before the cub hopped onto the back of her head and meowed as it reached for her ears. At this, Blake merely sighed, exasperated and amused at the kitten's antics, smirking slightly. The tiger-like Khajiit let off a loud purr-growl and began slowing.  
  
“This one will let the others know.”  
  
A cub mewled towards him, and the Pahmar-raht sped back up and head-butt the kitten gently, received one from the cub, and then went back to speak with some other Khajiit.  
  
“D’aww!” Ruby gushed.

* * *

The caravan had stopped to make camp just before dusk, and the hunters set out, most of the two-legged ones with bows, save for three of Team RWBY. Blake, having some experience with the weapon, decided to see if her skills with it hadn’t completely rusted away. The hunting party split apart several times, each time sending more of them on their own. Blake’s ears swiveled as she listened for prey, the other girls doing their best to not raise their voices over a whisper.  
  
“So, what kind of animal should we bag?” Ruby whispered.  
  
“Whatever we get,” her partner answered. “We don’t really get to pick.”  
  
“Shhh,” Blake went quietly. She closed her eyes and listened for a long moment. Her eyes suddenly snapped open and she drew back her bow before releasing it, letting an arrow loose. A black and grey form had leapt out of the bushes, only for the projectile to sink into its chest. The creature let out a whine and collapsed, showing them a dead wolf.  
  
The rest of the pack emerged, growling and baring teeth. They tried to charge, but the girls were used to more deadly and vicious killers swarming them with far more reckless abandon than the wolves could hope to accomplish. Six more died before the rest ran, whimpering and giving off calls of retreat. Team RWBY stayed vigilant for another minute before allowing themselves to sheathe their weapons and look over their kills.  
  
“Good thinking going for the head and neck,” Blake told her teammates. “That’ll keep most of the meat good.”  
  
“Wait, you want us to eat these?” Ruby asked in shock.  
  
Blake arched an eyebrow. “I mean, it’s meat.”  
  
“They’re wolves!”  
  
“O…kay?” Blake didn't really see what the problem was as she kneeled over one of her kills.  
  
“That’s like…one step from a dog!”  
  
“Ruby, I think you’re blowing this way out of proportion,” her partner admonished. “Besides, we can trade them with someone who’s got an excess of deer or something else. Surely someone in the caravan has a taste for wolf meat.”  
  
“Heh,” Yang laughed. “Cats eating dogs.”  
  
“Really, Yang?” Blake asked in annoyance.  
  
“Come on, it’s ironic!” she defended.  
  
“Let’s just…heft these back.” Blake picked up one of the wolves and threw it on her shoulders. “Maybe I could show you how to clean them.”  
  
“How hard can cleaning them be?” Ruby asked innocently.

* * *

The team leader whimpered once the lesson was over.  
  
“I thought you knew what it meant. Didn’t anyone ever teach you survival skills?” Blake asked, an eyebrow arched as she looked at the whimpering girl, her sister comforting her.  
  
“Yeah, but not how to butcher an animal,” Yang answered on her sister’s behalf.  
  
“I haven’t butchered it. I just skinned and cleaned it.”  
  
Weiss was silently catatonic. In a past life she may have gagged and retched at the sight and smell of an animal being emptied of its innards, but it seemed that in this life she couldn’t find it in herself.  
  
“Butchering is when you cut the meat apart. So…next step. Actually, I think that’s his job.” She and Yang looked over to see a Cathay with a table set up, cutting apart the cleaned catches of his caravan with expert ease. He already had a stack of meats beside him and several smaller animals hanging next to his makeshift workstation.  
  
Before anyone could say anything else, one of the two Senche-raht, both bigger than any sort of cat the team had ever even heard of, dragged some kind of three-eyed creature out of the woods.  
  
“What in the world?” Blake muttered.  
  
“Sintesh, you have the oddest of tastes!” an elf-like Ohmes told the massive lion-like being. “How do you even taste the troll’s meat through all of that fat?”  
  
“Do not judge Sintesh’s palate when you like the taste of dartwing seasoning on your rabbit.”  
  
“That is something completely different!”  
  
“Wait, aren’t dartwings those little dragonfly things?” Yang asked. Silence descended over the girls as they thought over Yang's observation, before they all simultaneously retched.  
  
“Ew!”

* * *

The girls had just finished a meal of grilled pheasant and roasted carrots after setting up camp with the caravan. Unlike before, the team had tents to sleep in and didn’t need to worry about watch. The four had their sleeping bags set out when Ruby suddenly looked over at her partner.  
  
“Are you…getting thirsty?”  
  
Weiss stiffened and looked over at her.  
  
“I’ll be fine,” Weiss answered, unconvincingly. Already, the signs of her 'dehydration' were beginning to appear.  
  
“Weiss, last time you looked like you were going to keel over at any minute,” Yang pointed out.  
  
“If something’s wrong, you should let us know,” Blake added.  
  
The heiress sighed and sat down.  
  
“Well, what are we supposed to even do?”  
  
Ruby hummed, thinking of a way to help her partner, before an idea popped into her head. Looking through her pack, she took out a cup and set it on the ground before taking out an iron knife. She gripped the knife’s edge and took a deep breath as she held it over the cup.  
  
“Ruby?” Weiss half-shrieked. A second later, Ruby yanked the knife out of her hand and hissed in pain as blood poured out into the cup.  
  
“Ow,” she muttered before smirking. “Have to…hold back my Aura, but I got it.” Just before the cup filled up, blood stopped leaking from her hand and she opened it up for a second. The girls saw her flesh knitting itself back together as her Aura flowed through once again. She picked up the cup with her other hand and took it over to Weiss, who looked at her incredulously.  
  
“Ruby… You…”  
  
“You can’t afford to risk biting us, but we can’t just let you get starved again, so here,” she offered the cup over, almost in Weiss’s face. The heiress smelled the scent of blood and, unable to hold back, took it and slowly drank the red liquid within. When it was all gone, down to the last drop that could roll down the cup’s side, she let the cup down from her face with a satisfied smile. Already the effects kicked in, with her looking like normal again, her new normal at least.  
  
“Thank you,” she muttered.  
  
“No problem,” Ruby said with a grin as she wiped her hand with a handkerchief, though she didn’t seem to be cleaning it well. “Slight problem.”  
  
“Here,” Weiss said as she opened her water flask and dabbed a little into the cloth. As she sponged away the blood, she couldn’t help but notice it seep into the wet handkerchief. She slowed down in her cleaning, watching as she wiped away the stains, turning the white fabric redder and redder with each rub.  
  
“Ahem.” Weiss jumped out of her stupor and looked over to Yang. “Do you think you can give my sister back her hand?” She looked over to see Ruby smiling awkwardly and let go of her right hand immediately, an embarrassed blush entering her face.  
  
“Sorry!”  
  
“No, it’s fine. You did get it pretty clean.”  
  
She just nodded and looked back to the cup. Thinking about it for a moment, she poured a little water into it and swirled it around before downing it.  
  
“So, should we set up a schedule for who feeds Weiss and when?” Yang asked.  
  
“Yang!” Weiss shrieked in surprise.  
  
“What? I’m being serious. You can’t just give her your blood every day. Besides, what if I want a hand massage?”  
  
“I- It was-” Weiss sputtered. “That was just a- I went into a daze right after drinking!”  
  
Yang just chuckled as she lay down.  
  
“You know,” Blake began. “We’ve come across some awful things here, but… Compared to back on Remnant…” She trailed off.  
  
“Besides the dragon, it’s so much safer,” Ruby finished her teammate's line of thinking. “Well, the vampire thing was bad, too, but that’s something we’re going to fix.”  
  
“Mummies,” Yang reminded them.  
  
“Draugr,” Weiss corrected. “And those stay in the ancient barrows. A village like Riverwood existed just down the mountain from them this entire time. They figured the bandit groups to be a bigger threat than the undead sentries.”  
  
“Heck, so if we can figure out how to get rid of the dragon, or convince him to _not_ kill people, then this place would be….” Ruby hummed in thought. “Not perfect, but…I could bring everyone here and feel good about it.”  
  
“A paradise,” Blake agreed. “It really does seem that way, doesn’t it?”  
  
“When compared to home,” Yang thought aloud. “Yeah.”

* * *

The second day of travel was uneventful, aside from seeing a few giants herding around a dozen mammoths across the tundra. Team RWBY were awed by the sight of the large beings and their massive chattel, but it soon rolled away. Almost the moment the giant’s disappeared, Whiterun could be seen on the horizon, its tiered levels rising as they watched.  
  
“Whoa! It’s totally different from Solitude!” Ruby awed, standing up to get a better look.  
  
“For one thing, it looks like it’s made out of wood,” Weiss pointed out in worry.  
  
Yang hissed. “Not good.”  
  
They passed by several farms as they closed in on the city, but at one, there seemed to be a commotion. Three people seemed to be fighting against a giant. Seeing this, the Huntresses pulled out their weapons and leapt into action.  
  
“Hold on! We’re coming!” Ruby yelled before jumping in and hitting the back of the giant’s knee with the back of Crescent Rose. The leg bent forward, but the giant caught itself and turned with a swing of its club.  
  
“Eep!” Ruby dashed out of the way and huffed. The large man with a greatsword swiped at the giant, barely cutting into his thigh and eliciting a deep yell from the large creature. It attempted a stomp, only for a shot to ring out, impacting the giant's shoulder. It roared in pain before looking the source, its eyes narrowed as it looked at a smirking Yang.  
  
“Hey big guy! Pick on someone your own size!” Yang shouted up at him before jumping up and punching his gut. It stumbled back and the archer woman laughed.  
  
Yang turned back and gave a thumb up, but the other woman snarled.  
  
“Pay attention or-!”  
  
The giant’s club came around and smacked Yang into the air like a golf ball.  
  
“Waagh!” Yang screamed out as she flew through the air before smacking into the top of a nearby windmill, creating a neat hole and making the turbines collapse to the ground.  
  
“Shor’s Bones!” the swordswoman called out in horror, certain she was dead.  
  
“Yang!” Ruby called out.  
  
“That’s why you focus!” the swordsman yelled before turning and using his momentum to slice at the giant’s knee. Weiss dashed in and stabbed at his calf, piercing through it and earning a yell of pain from the large being.  
  
“Blake, ribbon!” Ruby called out. She grabbed the cloth part of Gambol Shroud and ran around the giant before pulling it taut. The giant’s legs were forced together and it swayed uncertainly before Ruby jumped forward and hit it in the back, knocking it forward onto the ground.  
  
“Hey ugly!” everyone heard from above and looked up to see Yang with her hair alight. The three warriors eyes widened at the sight of her not only alive and well, but unharmed. In fact, she merely looked enraged. She jumped down with a yell and punched the giant in the face, smashing it into the ground. The large being groaned and went silent.  
  
“Gods damn!” the large man said as he sheathed his sword to his back. “Never thought I’d see someone knock a giant unconscious! With their fists, no less!”  
  
“So…” the swordswoman began uncertainly. “Do we kill it or…?”  
  
“No honor in killing a downed foe,” the archer answered as she walked up. “The Khajiit are coming in. Maybe they can get one of their battlecats to drag it back to its camp.” Turning to the young huntresses, the archer looked them over with appraising eyes. “Good work, strangers. I haven’t seen any of you around before.”  
  
“We’re new,” Ruby answered.  
  
“I’ll bet. Still, it’s obvious you all know your way around a fight. And at least one of you knows how to take a hit.” Yang laughed nervously at that. “You should come by Jorrvaskr. Meet Kodlak.”  
  
"Yeah,” the big guy agreed. “We’d love to see you in the Companions.”  
  
“Companions? I think I heard one of the Khajiit mention them. That a group?” Yang asked as she dusted herself off.  
  
“We’re a fighters’ guild, of sorts, but that doesn’t really do us justice,” the archer explained. “You’ll just have to see for yourselves, I suppose. Just tell them Aela asked you to come. If you don’t mind, we’re going to see if those Khajiits mind dragging this guy off.”  
  
“Oh, we’re traveling with them actually,” Ruby explained. “We have a message for the Yerl.”  
  
“Jarl,” Weiss corrected.  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Understandable. Just be sure to drop by when you have the time, anytime.”  
  
“Sure thing,” she said as she collapsed Crescent Rose.  
  
“What in Oblivion!” the swordswoman declared.  
  
“Was that some kind of Dwarven artifact?” the man asked in surprise and wonder.  
  
“Uh, no?” Ruby shrugged at their wide-eyed expressions.

* * *

“Okay. Have our things,” Weiss declared as she picked up the bundle of wolf furs wrapped around a mammoth tusk.  
  
“How about we give these things to the Khajiits?” Yang suggested.  
  
“First of all, they’re ours. Second, they suggested we sell them. Furs are always in demand, and ivory is hard to acquire outside of poaching or direct trade with the giants clans.”  
  
“So we’re going to sell them?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
The girls walked up the winding way, passing by a small drawbridge and then up to the gate. When they stepped through, they could see the keep up at the top of the hill above the rest of the city, along with some large houses standing next to it. At the second tier there seemed to be a larger collection of homes and a tall tree near its center. At the bottom were even more buildings, but it also appeared to be the bustling business district of the whole town. They started walking in, but turned when they heard a guard calling out to someone.  
  
“Just where do you think you’re going?” the guard said to a young Suthay Khajiit that had followed them most of the way.  
  
“This one wished to see-”  
  
“You aren’t allowed into the city. We don’t need any thieving cats mucking about.”  
  
“You…” Blake walked up to the guard, who seemed taken aback by the girl getting in his face. “What’s your problem?!”  
  
“What are you on about?”  
  
“He just wants to enter the town! What’s so wrong with that?! Why are you keeping him out?”  
  
“It’s my job!”  
  
“Your job is to turn people away or kick them out because of their race?!”  
  
“Please, friend,” another voice said and she turned to see Ko’ari there. “M’thri, go back to the camp. We aren’t welcome in the city except on special occasions.”  
  
The younger Khajiit groaned and turned to walk back own the path.  
  
“Ko’ari, you don’t have to-”  
  
“Let the Nords do what they want with their lands, Blake. It isn’t worth arguing over. Besides,” she leaned over, quietly whispering into Blake's ear, “the spot we take is one of the best, between the gate and stables. Anyone heading into the city will run into us first.” She laughed and started back to camp.  
  
“It just isn’t right. It’s not fair to you.”  
  
“Life is rarely fair. But we make the best of it. Go and make your best.”  
  
Blake seemed dejected, but went back into Whiterun, the guard keeping an eye on her as she reentered. The team looked at her nervously.  
  
“You okay?” her partner asked.  
  
“I’ll…be fine.”  
  
“Remind you of some bad times?” Yang asked, putting her hand on her partner's shoulder.  
  
“Yeah. Bad times.”  
  
They started walking forward, only to almost immediately get sidetracked by Ruby walking towards a forge and watching the woman there work over some steel into plate.  
  
“You going for a chest piece?” Ruby asked, excited at the sight of something being made.  
  
“I am,” the woman responded as she looked up from her work and wiped her brow. “Welcome to Warmaiden’s. The outside anyways. I have a few things out here, but there’s more inside.” She thumbed towards the nearby building.  
  
“Ooh, actually, do you know what this is?” Ruby asked as she showed her the gauntlet she’d been wearing everywhere but to bed. The woman looked at it closely and then nodded.  
  
“Looks like Dwemer, or Dwarven as most call it. Good metal, but hard to work. No one’s ever figured out how to remake the metal they made most of their things out of. Just a few know how to forge it into new shapes.”  
  
“Cool. How long does it last? We found it in a _really_ old place.”  
  
“Well, seeing as the Dwemer have been gone since the first Era, and I’ve never seen a spot of rust on anything of Dwemer make, I would guess it’s going to last you your whole lifetime. Probably longer, actually. Might want to replace the lining on occasion though.”  
  
“Oh, I did that at Riverwood. Alvor didn’t know what it was. Said it looked elven but was too heavy to be.”  
  
“Technically, the Dwemer were elves.” Ruby was about to ask how Dwarves could be elves when a cough directed her attention to her annoyed team.  
  
“Uh, Ruby,” her sister insisted.  
  
“Oh! Sorry, we’ve got to go up and see the Jarl.”  
  
“Ah, hold on then. If you’re heading up to Dragonsreach, would you mind giving my father this sword? He's the steward, up at Dragonsreach.” She handed over a greatsword from the wall to the older sister, but Ruby took it instead.  
  
“Ooh, nice!” the girl said as she eyed over the weapon.  
  
“I’d hope so,” she laughed as she watched the girl. “It’s my best piece yet. Tell him to present it to the Jarl for me at some point. He’ll know when the best time is. Also, see if you can mention him visiting his daughter once in a while.”  
  
“Sure. No problem.” Ruby sheathed the sword next to the ancient ice sword on her back. The blacksmith laughed for a moment at the sight.  
  
“I think you have more blades than limbs at this point. Well then, I’ll leave you to it.” She turned back to her work and looked over the steel piece before taking her hammer back up.  
  
“Okay, to the Jarl.”  
  
“No more stops this time,” her partner chided. “We can look around _after_ we’ve told him about the dragon.”  
  
The girls began walking up a set of stairs leading them straight to the tree. At the other end a man in priest robes was yelling something about Talos. The girls immediately found it annoying, but could understand why he was upset.  
  
“Still can’t believe they did that,” Yang muttered.  
  
“What I don’t get is why,” Ruby said back to her. “What good does making a god illegal do?”  
  
“I think…this is what they wanted,” Blake answered. “Because of the whole thing, a war broke out. Now a possible enemy of theirs is making itself weaker from the inside.”  
  
"That's…smart," Weiss begrudgingly admitted. The more she learned about these 'Thalmor', the more disgust formed within her.  
  
Past him they began walking up another set of stone stairs. Across from the top was a bridge that led to the keep’s entrance. They continued forward and entered the building to see a U-shaped table, currently clear of anything but candelabras. At the other side of the room, sitting under a dragon skull hanging on the wall was a man in noble regalia fitting of the country speaking to another man. A Dunmer woman saw them and walked over, a hand on the hilt of her sword and her fingers curled.  
  
“She’s cast-ready,” Weiss warned.  
  
“Huh?” Ruby asked, confused as to how Weiss would know that.  
  
“The way she’s holding her hand. She’s ready to use a spell if she has to. Cynrrbert taught me that.”  
  
“What’s the meaning of this interruption?” the Dunmer asked them. “Jarl Balgruuf is not receiving any visitors.”  
  
“We came from Helgen. We saw the dragon there,” Weiss explained. “The people of Riverwood sent us forward to request aid.”  
  
At this, the Jarl stood up, having overheard them.  
  
“You know about Helgen? Very well, approach, but no funny business.” The Dunmer escorted them to the awaiting Jarl, eyes trained on them at all times.  
  
The girls walked forward, and the Jarl’s eyes scanned over them all.  
  
“So, you were at Helgen? You saw this dragon with your own eyes?”  
  
“Yes sir, uh, lord,” Ruby stammered. “Weiss, help me,” she whispered to her friend.  
  
“We arrived at Helgen to see it destroyed. The dragon attacked us, but we managed to escape,” Weiss clarified. “After we got out, some soldiers helped us reach Riverwood. Once we recuperated, we headed straight here. Riverwood is close to where we last saw the dragon, and we’re afraid it might strike again.”  
  
“I see. This is bad news indeed.” He looked over at the man next to him. “What say you now, Proventus? Shall we continue to trust in the strength of our walls? Against a dragon?”  
  
“Shall I prepare a detachment to send to Riverwood, my Jarl?” the Dunmer asked. Before the Jarl could affirm, the man next to him interjected.  
  
“The Jarl of Falkreath will see that as a provocation,” Proventus warned. Ruby noted he must have been the smith's father. She'll have to give him the sword after this. “He’ll assume we’re preparing to join Ulfric’s side and attack him. We should not-”  
  
“Enough!” Balgruuf demanded, making even the team go rigid at his command. “I’ll not stand idly by while a dragon burns my hold and slaughters my people! Irileth, send that detachment to Riverwood at once.”  
  
“Yes, my Jarl.” As she walked away, Proventus cleared his throat.  
  
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to my duties.”  
  
“That would be best,” Balgruuf coldly replied as he walked away as well, before sighing and turning his attention to the young girls in front of him. “You four, you’ve done us a great service, confirming this dragon for us. For this, I will see you all rewarded with armor straight from my own armory.”  
  
“Uh, thank you, sir,” Ruby responded. “We were just doing what was right.”  
  
“That is why you deserve it. I’ll have Fianna and Gerda show you the way in a moment. But first, given your…relative expertise in this matter, I’m hoping you can help us with something else. If you would follow me.” Jarl Balgruuf began walking down one of the halls leading to the side. The four girls followed him, wondering just what he would request. He opened up a door and walked in. They saw that the room had haphazard desks with scattered parchment atop them. There was a set of alembics and vials sitting near a burner, and in the corner there was a table with glowing runes etched upon it. A man in a blue robe was poring over some documents at one table while tracing lines in a book. “This is my court wizard, Farengar. He’s been researching dragons and…rumors of dragons.”  
  
“Ah, thank you, my Jarl,” the wizard said as he took note of them. “Who…exactly are these young ladies?”  
  
“Survivors of Helgen. I’m hoping they can assist you.” He looked at them all and nodded. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll send a servant to lead you to the armory in just a moment.” At this, the Jarl left, leaving the girls alone with the wizard, whom they just now noticed had mutton chops.  
  
The wizard began looking them over, taking note of their appearance, though his gaze definitely lingered when he saw the two greatswords at Ruby’s back. “So, he thinks you can be of some use to me. Very well. How experienced are any of you with ancient barrows?”  
  
“We’ve been in one, if that’s what you mean,” Weiss answered. “Actually, we have a few questions about that one. While we were in there, some kind of wall with writing on it did something to our friend.”  
  
“Hi,” Ruby squeaked.  
  
“Now she can read what another mage thinks might be Dragon script.”  
  
“Wait, you can read Dragon script?” His interest was definitely piqued at that.  
  
“Uh, kinda…” Ruby answered nervously. “If I see it, it looks like normal words to me. I actually have to focus to notice that it’s not regular writing.”  
  
“She also says it out loud in what I think is their spoken language,” Weiss went on. “The first time she read it aloud, she immediately repeated it in Vyt- in Common. She has to think about it to translate, but she can read and understand it.”  
  
“Oh, how interesting!” he exclaimed. “Tell me, what barrow were you in? What did this Word Wall say?”  
  
“We were in Bleak Falls Barrow. It said: Here lies the Guardian, Keeper of the Dragonstone, and a Force of unending Rage and Darkness.”  
  
“Fascinating! Well, then this should be simple if you’ve already been there.” He walked over and picked out a blank parchment while taking out an inkpot. “Well, assuming that it’s there. I need what’s known as a Dragonstone, which the Word Wall was referring to. It’s a map of ancient dragon burial sites. Since you’ve gone through it once already, all you need to do is reenter the main chamber, where it most likely is, and bring it back. Now, what did the Wall say again?”  
  
“Wait a minute.” Blake pulled the tablet from her pack. “You mean this thing?”  
  
Farengar looked at the stone and began laughing. “Truly, you lot are a different sort. That’s it exactly! Tell me, can you read what it says?”  
  
“Sure. Het nok un mahlaan drogge erei suleyk se Alduin vokrii. Here lies our fallen lords until the power of Alduin revives.” She suddenly went still and then gasped. “What if it was a zombie dragon!? The one that attacked Helgen!”  
  
“Don’t be absurd,” Weiss reprimanded her, slightly smug at how she was mostly right about the stone map.  
  
“It’s unfortunate I don’t have much else in the ways of Dragon script. Perhaps you can visit sometime and read another thing or two for me?”  
  
“Eh, I don’t mind.”  
  
“Actually, I have some questions,” Weiss started. “Do you think you could show me some things about magic?”  
  
“Ah, an aspiring mage? Certainly, I could show you a thing or two. How good are you with alchemy?”  
  
“Um, I’m not sure?” she said with uncertainty.  
  
“We’ll just have to see then.”  
  
“While you do that, how about the rest of us check out the town?” Yang suggested.  
  
“We haven’t gotten our reward yet,” Blake pointed out.  
  
“After we get our rewards, of course.”

* * *

“So, I can get you a tusk, but it will be at least a hundred,” Blake explained.  
  
“A bit much, but I can meet that,” Ysolda answered.  
  
“All right. I’ll bring it by the Bannered Mare tonight then.”  
  
The two shook hands and then parted ways. Blake smirked at the deal she’d just made, though she did have to wonder why no one in the caravan approached them about wanting a mammoth tusk. As she walked, she began eyeing the tree, wondering just what it was. It looked dead. As far as she knew, it was the tail end of summer in Skyrim, and a tree shouldn’t have lost all its leaves already.  
  
“Such a shame, isn’t it,” a woman in priest robes said to her.  
  
“Is it dead?”  
  
“Dying, but…it may as well be dead. It was struck by lightning some time ago, and it has only faded since. I’ve done everything I could think of, but I’m afraid it will be lost to us soon.”  
  
“Maybe you can plant a new one.”  
  
“It wouldn’t be the same. The Gildergreen is no ordinary tree. It grew from a cutting of the Eldergleam, the oldest living tree in all of Skyrim. Maybe the oldest living thing in Tamriel.”  
  
“Wow, that’s actually…pretty amazing.” Blake wondered for a moment about such a tree. “The oldest trees where I come from are known as the bristlecone pine. They grow on Sanus, and can reach almost five thousand years old.”  
  
“They sound amazing.”  
  
“I’ve actually seen them. They look kinda gnarled, to be honest. They aren't pretty to look at. This thing looks like it must have been beautiful.”  
  
“It was.” The priestess seemed to think to herself for a moment. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Danica Pure-Spring. I work in the Temple of Kynereth.”  
  
“Blake Belladonna. I…guess I’m an adventurer.”  
  
“Most people are quick to use the title. I suppose you know what it’s really like, though. Which is why, if you don’t mind, I’m asking this of you. See, there may be a way to restore the Gildergreen. If it were treated with the sap of its parent tree, I could likely restore it. No, I’m almost certain I could.”  
  
“I guess it’s in a hard to reach place.”  
  
“Not the Eldergleam, no. But I don’t have anything that could draw sap from it. It’s an old tree, older than metal. There is one thing though that might work. I’ve heard that there are some Hagravens at Orphan’s Rock who have a weapon they use to sacrifice spriggans. They call it ‘Nettlebane’. If it is the one I think, then…it should work.”  
  
“Hagravens?”  
  
“Evil creatures. Completely unnatural. Some witches turn themselves into them with human sacrifice. Very dangerous, too. Hence why I don't get it myself.”  
  
“So…there are some of these at…Orphan’s Rock. And they’ll have this Nettlebane. What does it look like?” Blake asked, slightly disturbed.  
  
“Probably a ritual dagger. I’m not certain. I only started looking it up recently because of the Gildergreen. I suppose…look around wherever they’re throwing the dead spriggans at.”

* * *

The sound of hammers hitting metal resounded across the yard as two smiths worked to forge a blade. At one anvil was an older man, with arms teeming with muscle. At the other anvil a young girl, and though she didn’t appear very strong, she swung her own hammer with as much fervor.  
  
Eorlund dipped his nearly finished blade into the water trough first. Ruby’s was only ready long after he pulled it free and set it aside. When the younger smith’s blade was sat next to his, three warriors, who hadn’t seen which blade belonged to which, came and looked them both over.  
  
“This one,” the first said.  
  
“Both are good, but that one’s definitely better.  
  
“I agree. Though, I wouldn’t mind either blade.”  
  
“Ah, pickles,” Ruby bemoaned her loss. Eorlund just laughed and patted her on the shoulder.  
  
“Hey, you did fine work lass. I haven’t seen a blade come out that well from someone else in an age.” He lifted up her work and looked it over. “It’s still a beautiful sword. If I didn’t see you forge it myself, I’d have thought it to be the work of someone nearly as experienced as I am.”  
  
“Aw, shucks, you’re just saying that.” Ruby blushed, embarrassed at the older smith's praise.  
  
“Hey, does this mean you’re finally getting an apprentice?” a woman asked. “Gods know you could use a little help around the forge.”  
  
“I can still work it on my own,” Eorlund stubbornly insisted. “Besides, the apprentice finds a master, not the other way around.”  
  
“Well, I can’t really stay,” Ruby admitted. “I do love your forge, honestly. And I love making weapons, but me and my friends have to find our way home.”  
  
“Don’t worry girl. I understand entirely. Though, if you’re going to be around, see about helping an old man fill out some orders, hm.” He laughed again and took the two blades over to the whetstone.  
  
Yang came up to the forge and stretched herself a bit. “Hey, Rubes. You done beating up old folks?”  
  
“Actually, he won.”  
  
“What? No way!”  
  
“Yep. Unbiased judges and all. He’s just that much better than me.”  
  
“Well, he has been at this for a long time.”  
  
“Longer than either of you have been alive,” Vilkas said as he followed the blonde up. “You’ve both got your initiation mission tomorrow. We’ve got a problem with a mad bear over towards the south, and some people are saying some witches’ coven has been causing a ruckus. Feel free to ask someone for assistance. We don’t plan on you doing these things alone.”  
  
“Well, I guess we could use someone as a guide. You guys know this place like the back of your hands by now, I’m sure.”  
  
“That we do. All right. You girls can feel free to sleep at Jorrvaskr if you wish. Free bed and all. I’ll be seeing you later.”  
  
As Vilkas walked off, Yang took a look at the sword Eorlund was sharpening and whistled. “Now that’s a sword!”

* * *

Weiss winced when, once again, the enchanted item she was observing seemed to crumble into dust.  
  
‘Ruby is not going to be happy about that one. Well, at least I know how to make anything cause a freezing effect upon a hit.’  
  
“Good one to learn. Anything that can be slowed can be more easily killed.”  
  
“Um, is there a way to learn these without destroying the items?”  
  
“There is.”  
  
Weiss waited for a moment for an answer. “And that would be?”  
  
“Experience. Once you’ve gotten good at learning enchantments through observing them, you can do it without causing any sort of damage to the item in question. But that’s a ways away. For now, let’s try adding an enchantment. Let’s see… Where did I put those Soul Gems?” Farengar opened up a drawer and pulled out several ‘gems’ that made Weiss’s eye go wide. “No, these are empty.”  
  
“Wait a moment,” she pleaded while picking one up and observing it closely. “This…looks just like an inert Dust crystal.”  
  
“I’m sorry? That’s just your everyday Common Soul Gem.”  
  
“Well…yes, but… you said it was empty? Do you have ‘filled’ ones?”  
  
“Certainly. I’m looking for them.” He opened up another drawer. “Ah, here we go.” He picked up a similar gem, this one with a bit of shine to it. Weiss’s eyes narrowed as she observed it.  
  
“What…do these Soul Gems do?”  
  
“They have a number of uses, but most of them are as power sources. In the case of enchantment, they are what you use to ‘fuel’ the enchantment you add. Well, I say fuel, but it’s more that they’re sort of the bonding agent. I suppose you don’t know how Soul Trap works?”  
  
Weiss didn’t like the sound of that. “I don’t. Enlighten me.”  
  
“Well, I’ll teach it to you afterwards. So, every size of Soul Gem can hold a soul of a comparable size.” Her eyes widened again. “But of course, they only hold White Souls. That is, the souls of your everyday animals. The souls of sentient beings like ourselves require Black Soul Gems, which are, quite obviously, rarer, and don’t have size classes. I also…object to their use.”  
  
“You…capture souls…as fuel.”  
  
“I can see the worry in your eyes. Don’t be apprehensive about it. Captured White Souls passed on into the Aetherium and are reborn just as they would be if they’d died normally. As for Black Souls…it’s more complex. Which is why I don’t like their usage. Better to use a White Soul I know won’t suffer than risk sending someone into eternal damnation.”  
  
“But…it still seems so…wrong.”  
  
“I suppose it takes getting used to. Just think of it as using any other part of the animal. Skin for clothes, meat for food, bones for hilts, that sort of thinking,” Farengar advised. Still unsure, Weiss continued to look over the Soul Gem. “You know, normally one wouldn't expect a vampire to care so much about the fate of another creature's soul."  
  
Weiss froze, fear tingling down her spine as she slowly looked over to Farengar, his stoic expression now gazing into her soul.  
  
"Don't be so surprised. You aren't the first one I've met. And you’ve done well with the eye-color changing trick, but it lets up when you’re feeling emotional.” He smiled and shook his head. “Relax. I know there's a difference between a mindless, blood-thirsty vampire and one who simply wants to continue their life as before. You're the latter sort, I can tell. There's no point is trying to 'slay' you or turning you over to the guards. You traveled with a cadre of friends, none of them vampires, none of them enthralled. I assume they're helping you of their own free will, and no doubt know about you. And if someone who goes out of their way to help a village in the back end of the hold can get said village and the Jarl himself to trust you, then there's no risk in me trusting you either."  
  
"You've...thought this through really well."  
  
"Of course. I've been observing you this entire time, even as I taught you. It's no big trick to hold two lines of thought at once. I daresay, it looks like you’d rather leave your friends out of the whole vampire deal.”  
  
Weiss nodded. “There’s no way I’d ever do something like this to them. I’d rather die.”  
  
“That’s good to hear. Now, seeing as you haven’t tried to use your enhanced strength to break my neck and your natural invisibility abilities to sneak out of here after my little reveal, I think I can trust you a bit more.” As Weiss stood there, confused as to what he meant by that, he pulled an iron dagger out of another drawer and set it on the enchanting table. “Your first few enchantments are going to be pitiful, but, once you gain mastery of it, you will be able to bestow enchantments the like of which only gods can better. Try enchanting that dagger then.”

* * *

Mikhail fell back onto his rear, nursing a swollen and bruised eye.  
  
“From now on, know that no,” Yang cracked her knuckles, “means no.”  
  
“Undershood,” the bard lisped through a swollen lip.  
  
“What was that?”  
  
“Understood, ma’am!”  
  
Yang smiled and nodded. “All right then. Have a pleasant evening.”  
  
One Nord watching seemed to have a twinkle in his eyes. “The arms on that woman!”  
  
“Wouldn’t mind going a few rounds with her,” his friend said before wagging his eyebrows. Both laughed and returned to their mugs and banter. Not noticing her new admirers, Yang strolled over to her team, who were eating their stew while waiting on her return.  
  
“All hail Yang, defender of the single mothers,” her sister teased, failing to hold back her giggles.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, laugh at me. Weiss, what are you doing?”  
  
The heiress looked up from whatever she was fiddling with. “Uh, what?”  
  
“What’re you doing under the table?”  
  
In response, the white-haired girl lifted up a sack and set it on the table.  
  
“While you were off punching insistent bards in the face, which I thoroughly support, I counted through our money twice,” she explained. “One ebon, four denars, two malks, and six septims, or nine-hundred and twenty-six septims. …And sixty three cents.”  
  
Yang let out a low whistle. “Sounds like a good bit!”  
  
“Not really. It’s enough to live off of for quite a while, but there’s no telling how much we’ll need in the future. And we still have to go by Solitude and get our reward for that amulet. We still have those, right?”  
  
“All five,” Ruby confirmed, before pouting. “But I lost my special water-breathing necklace because of you. And my frost sword.”  
  
“How many times…! I’ll make you a new one, I promise.” She sighed in exasperation before quickly looking through the bag of money again. “We should put at least one ebon in savings. I’ll open up an account at the bank in the Cloud District.”  
  
“Wait, they have banks?” Ruby wondered. “How does that work?”  
  
“Banks existed on Remnant long before instant communication. They just weren’t internationally connected until about fifty years ago.”  
  
"Then how will we be able to...?"  
  
"Crystal balls hooked up on some kind of interbank network that tells the other banks how much money each person has in their account. At least, that's what Farengar told me..." Weiss interjected before going silent, remembering how he had recognized her condition.  
  
"Ah... Neat."  
  
Seeing how their money problem was currently resolved, and tired after a long day’s work, Yang reached for a brown bottle, only to have her hand stopped by Blake. “Ten more minutes.”  
  
“Aw!” Yang whined, half serious and half joking. "Come on, Blakey! Live a..."  
  
A loud noise reverberated throughout the inn, sustained for about ten seconds, stopping Yang in mid-sentence, along with the rest of the diners. Everyone went quiet, tense at the unexpected sound. When it started up again, the diners quickly exited their seats, leaving their food and drinks behind in a rush, each sporting a worried look.  
  
“What’s going on?” Ruby asked the departing crowd, getting up from her seat, along with the rest of her team.  
  
“War horn,” an armored man answered. “Doesn’t make sense. There would have been an official declaration of war.”  
  
“Whiterun’s neutral, right?” Yang asked him.  
  
“Officially, but the Jarl might as well declare for the Empire the way he runs things.” The war horn echoed out it’s signal once again, making people pick up their pace. At this point, Whiterun itself was in a mild panic. “Ulfric Stormcloak wouldn’t have attacked without officially declaring war on Whiterun either. He believes in honorable conflict.”  
  
“I doubt he’d have the time either,” Weiss muttered. “He probably hasn’t even made it back to Windhelm yet.”  
  
“Let’s go see what’s going on,” Ruby suggested as she headed straight out the door. People were rushing along the streets up towards the Cloud District, likely to get further from whatever was threatening Whiterun. Near the gate she saw several guardsmen beginning to gather up, with Irileth herself leading them. Seeing Irileth at the front made Ruby pick up her pace, recognizing that if she was here, this was not just a bandit raid. Her team followed her outside while the other patrons still inside the tavern began heading up towards the Cloud District. Looking over the crowd, Yang recognized and waved at four people moving against the crowd.  
  
“’Sup guys!” The other three turned and saw Aela, Vilkas, Farkas, and another man only Yang knew the name of leading them. “What’s going on?”  
  
“I still don’t understand your greeting,” Skjor scowled before shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter right now. We just got word. Someone just ran all the way from the Western Watchtower. Says it was attacked by a dragon.”  
  
The girls froze up. The memories of that black beast they had fought and barely escaped from coming back to them.  
  
“S-so it’s here?” Ruby queried with a slight shake in her, the rest of her teammates not much better.  
  
“Near about. The Western Watchtower is a short ways from Whiterun proper.”  
  
“We’re going out to help the force being put together to hopefully fight it off,” Aela added. “It caught Helgen off-guard, and while they were occupied with other matters. Hopefully we stand a better chance.”  
  
Not wanting to waste any more time, they began walking towards the gate, Team RWBY right behind them. Upon realizing this, the four companions halted in surprise.  
  
“You four not planning on heading to the keep? Maybe Jorvaskr?” Farkas asked them.  
  
“No,” Ruby stated simply, resolute and determined. “I mean, I’m not. You guys-”  
  
“No way we’re letting you go alone,” Yang interrupted.  
  
“You’re our leader. If you’re brave enough to go out there and face a dragon, then it’d be shameful if I ran,” Weiss explained.  
  
“We’re better prepared this time,” Blake said with a nod.  
  
“Yeah, and besides, it's our duty to protect people from monsters.”  
  
“Atta girls,” Farkas quietly cheered for them.  
  
“What about you guys?” Ruby asked. “Are any more Companions coming?”  
  
“The rest are preparing a defense, just in case,” Vilkas explained. “We volunteered to go sally forth. Besides, fighting a dragon? Victory or Sovngarde, this’ll be a tale to tell.”  
  
Nodding their heads at each other, the eight marched up to the front gates upon the gathering guardsmen. As they neared, they could hear Irileth finish what must have been an inspirational speech to her men.  
  
“Could you call yourselves Nords if you ran from this monster? Are you going to let me face this thing alone?” she challenged to the group of warriors, briefly noting the new arrivals before nodding in approval, and then redirecting her attention to the soldiers.  
  
Several of them yelled out a throaty ‘no’, but one guard nearby muttered under his breath something that they all thought at least once.  
  
“We’re so dead…”  
  
“But it’s more than our honor at stake here! Think of it! The first dragon seen in Skyrim since the last age. The glory of killing it is ours, if you’re with me! Now what do you say? Shall we go kill us a dragon!”  
  
The crowd of guards, now thoroughly enraptured, started giving out battlecries. The nervousness and fear wasn’t quite gone from them, but it had been greatly diminished. Even the teen girls felt a little better about their chances.  
  
“Let’s move out!” the housecarl yelled before hopping down from her raised stone and heading out the gate, the small army following her. The Companions and Huntresses ended up somewhere in the middle as they jogged out of the city and down the path towards the west, with only the light of the moons guiding them, with a faint orange glow coming from the west.  
  
After several minutes of jogging, and then slowing to a brisk walk, the crowd neared the watchtower to see much of it ablaze, and its walls crumbled around it. The tower itself was still standing, but there was a large scorch on one side of it. Men and women stopped just behind Irileth, who looked about with a small spell in her hand that fizzled away after a moment.  
  
“No sign of any dragon, but it sure looks like he’s been here.” She looked back to the crowd and waved one arm out. “I know it looks bad, but let’s figure out what happened.” She looked back at the damage before muttering, “And if that dragon’s still skulking about anywhere. Spread out, and look for survivors. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”  
  
Aela walked over to the teens with a bow in hand. “Look like the dragon’s handiwork to you lot?”  
  
“Yeah, but…” Ruby tried to search for the words to describe her thoughts.  
  
“We didn’t have much time to observe the damage done to Helgen before we had to focus on the dragon itself,” Weiss explained. “The fire fits the bill perfectly though.”  
  
Yang lifted up a chunk of masonry and sighed as she dropped it to reveal a charred body. Farkas and Vilkas worked together to remove some heavy stones only to reveal a man that was more paste that anything.  
  
“Anyone find anything yet?” a guard asked after looking around a small, collapsed wooden structure.  
  
“Nothing here,” the blonde called back.  
  
“Hey, I found someone!” Blake announced from within the tower. Several people began running for the broken opening, seeing a man with a partially scorched uniform, groaning where he leaned against the wall.  
  
“You should-” His coughing interrupted him. “You should all leave. It’s still around somewhere.”  
  
A roar, one familiar to the girls resounded through the tundra, making everyone turn toward the mountains south of them.  
  
“No…” the survivor muttered. “Kynereth save us…”  
  
“Get ready!” Irileth shouted before pulling out her blade from its sheath.  
  
“Where is it?”  
  
“What does it look like?”  
  
“You four!” the Dunmer called out for Team RWBY. “You’ve seen the dragon before. What can we expect?”  
  
“That was definitely it!” Yang called out in reply, trying to keep the fear inside from coming out. “We heard that same noise before we reached Helgen!”  
  
“It flies faster than you’d expect,” Weiss described. “It mostly breathed fire, but it can breathe frost too. And the scales are harder than steel! Aim for the wings!”  
  
“It really doesn’t like people, and called us dumb mortals before threatening to kill us,” Ruby added.  
  
The other three paused at that.  
  
“Ruby, what?” her sister asked before a louder roar shook the air around them.  
  
“Look!” Blake screamed as she pointed up.  
  
The whole crowd looked at the sky to see a shape passing in front of Masser. As it passed by Secunda, it blocked nearly the whole of the smaller moon before seeming to drop and grow as it rapidly approached.  
  
“ **Ha!** ” a deep voice called from it as it passed them by. “ **I had forgotten what sport you mortals can provide!** ”  
  
Three of the girls felt a chill overtake them. Ruby stared at it with wide eyes.  
  
“It’s…not the same!”  
  
“What?!” Aela and Irileth both screamed.  
  
“It’s not the same dragon!” Ruby shouted. “The dragon at Helgen was bigger and all black. This one’s more grey colored!”  
  
“Another… Focus everyone!” the housecarl ordered as Aela fired an arrow towards the beast, going wide.  
  
With a loud laugh, the dragon swooped down and grasped one of the men with its large talons, his panicked screams filling the night air as he was taken into the sky as the dragon banked upwards. The reptile released the man, catapulting him away, flying higher through the sky before reaching the zenith of his flight and falling back down in the distance, his screams ending with a loud crunch.  
  
“Bows out! Aim for the wings!” At her command, a volley of arrows erupted, speeding towards the flying reptile. Most missed, but a few hit its mark, and to Blake's surprise and relief a grunt of pain came out.  
  
“Guys!” Ruby yelled as her team regathered.  
  
“There’s another one!” Weiss shrieked. “Why is there another one?!”  
  
“I don’t know, but listen, it’s smaller, and we have help!”  
  
“I saw a few arrows hit it,” Blake explained. “Only one stuck, but it _felt_ that. It's way softer than the other one.”  
  
“So, we have a chance this time!” Yang pounded her fists together, itching for some payback.  
  
“Maybe, but it’s…smart,” Ruby pondered. “Maybe we can make it back off?” At Ruby's suggestion, her team went silent, the sounds of battle and death overtaking them.  
  
“What are you thinking?” her sister asked cautiously.  
  
“It is intelligent, but I’m thinking it’s going to be hard to convince something like that to _not_ try to kill us,” Weiss warned.  
  
“I have to try. Even if I fail, I tried my best. Until then,” she took out Crescent Rose and set it to gun mode, “we’re going to do our best to stop it.”  
  
The girls nodded and went into action. Arrows continued to fill the sky, with some hitting their target, only to be repelled as a word left the dragon’s maw, scattered by a wave of power. Irileth, noting that the dragon was much lower to the ground this time, raised her hand and fired a bolt of lightning that hit the dragon’s underbelly. It roared in pain and turned as fire began leaving its mouth. Guards ducked behind whatever they could, while the Dunmer raised a magical ward, attempting to shield themselves from the flames, but some were still immolated, their screams sounding out as their bodies flailed. The ward spell began cracking, but held until the flames died and the dragon turned again and glided over the ground, circling the watchtower and coming back around. Irileth dodged out of the way of its jaws and spun to fire another lightning bolt at it.  
  
Yang charged up and fired two shots at its side. The dragon roared and banked back up and Yang cheered.  
  
“That hit ‘em! Drew blood!”  
  
“So it is softer,” Weiss whispered in relief.  
  
The dragon turned back and spun through another swarm of arrows before breathing out a stream of flames at the unfortunate Nords beneath it. It roared more joyously and began hovering while looking for prey.  
  
Ruby fired, her shot bouncing off of one of its horns. The dragon hissed and looked towards her.  
  
“Stop!” she screamed. “We don’t have to fight!”  
  
The dragon laughed as it came closer to the ground before it's feet landed.  
  
“ **Wrong, mortal** ,” it taunted as it stepped near her. “ **The war is begun again. It will not end until our lord has trampled you all under the rule of my brethren and I.** ” It laughed again, much louder this time. “ **Thuri du hin sil ko Sovngarde!** ”  
  
Ruby grit her teeth, aimed, and fired, striking its eye. The dragon jumped back and roared in pain. Ruby chambered a new round and fired again, hitting its neck and causing a spurt of blood to erupt. As she chambered a third round, the dragon reared its head back.  
  
“ **Yol** ,” she heard before disappearing in a swarm of petals. “ **Tor SHUUL!** ” Fire filled the area where Ruby once presided, scorching the land and adding to the ever increasing amount of flame that at this point threatened to turn into a wildfire.  
  
The girl looked back to see the dragon taking off again before it turned to make another pass.  
  
“Talking failed,” she groaned. “But…it said something about a lord.”  
  
“Well, we can hurt it!” Yang shouted as she cocked her gauntlets.  
  
“Yeah, let’s show this-” Something slammed into the speaking guardsman and Yang, throwing them both through a partly collapsed wall. Yang struggled to get up, but the Nord hadn’t been so lucky, practically exploding upon contact. The dragon banked hard and jumped off the side of the tower.  
  
“ **Hahaha! Tiid! Clo! Ul!** ” the dragon said before Ruby felt like the entire world was suddenly covered in molasses. Everything but the dragon slowed, and then the creature was coming straight for her, a foot open to catch her. She pushed her Semblance to the max and got out of the way. Suddenly the world came back to normalcy, but everyone seemed to not notice the effect, instead feeling as if the dragon seemed to have gotten extremely fast.  
  
“What…was that?” she gasped.  
  
Ice spikes flew at the dragon, smacking into it and breaking, save for three that pierced its wings. It turned and unleashed fire from its maw blindly, enraged as it began to slightly lose altitude before recovering. Attempting to disengage, Weiss ran from the flames, but it noticed her and, recognizing that she was the one who launched the ice spikes, unleashed a more directed stream right at her, encircling the teenage girl. The heiress screamed as she was enveloped in fire, her Aura straining to protect her. Before her Aura couldn't take anymore abuse, a yellow blur shot through with the sound of two guns firing at once, grabbing her and pulling her loose. Her clothes were singed, and her Aura was visibly taxed as Yang set her down.  
  
“Get some cover Ice Queen,” the brawler told her before turning back and pounding her fists together. “Good shot though.”  
  
The dragon landed for a moment, looking at its injured wing and growling. Several men charged, armed with different weapons, only to be enveloped in flames as the dragon unleashed another fire breath upon them, setting many on fire or outright charring them. One man was lucky enough to dodge, but as he picked himself off the ground, the dragon’s maw enclosed upon him, snapping him up before thrashing about and then tossing the body away.  
  
Yang charged at the dragon with a shout. Its head was smacked away by one punch and then upwards by the follow-up. The dragon flapped its wings and leapt back before smacking at her with its tail again, only for her to meet it with a fist and for them both to get knocked back. The dragon straightened out its flight as Yang skid away.  
  
“Blake,” Ruby shouted towards the girl that had relegated herself to firing arrows. “Can you get it if it gets close to the tower?”  
  
The faunus looked at the structure, and then nodded to her leader before heading inside. Ruby watched as the dragon circled out again, closing the distance it made quickly. She hefted Crescent Rose up and sped forward.  
  
“You can’t catch me!” she taunted the creature. It looked towards her and seemed to snarl. “Come and get it, you flying lizard!”  
  
“ **Hi fen oblaan us Mirmulnir, neltiid joor!** ”  
  
Ruby sped back to the tower, circling around it and waiting for the dragon to show. As it came around, she aimed up towards it, making it flinch back and hover. Just as it did so, Blake jumped upon its back and ran down, swiping at its spine before digging her sword into the skin of its wing between the third and fourth fingers and sliding off. The dragon roared in pain as it was forced to descend. It crashed into the ground, and the remaining guards had come around to see it.  
  
“Is it dead?” someone asked.  
  
The dragon rose up on its wings and snorted outward before growling at them all. Yang came around and charged up.  
  
“Got you this time!”  
  
“Yang! Wait!”  
  
“ **Tiid!** ” the dragon shouted as Yang neared it. Once again, Ruby saw the world go into slow-motion and the dragon stepped forward unaffected before snapping down onto her blonde sister. Ruby tried to speed forward, but her Semblance had barely activated before Yang was being lifted into the air and then tossed back down. She bounced once and landed on her back before the dragon jumped upwards and landed a foot on her legs and waist. Time resumed its pace and Yang was screaming as her Aura flared and shattered. Ruby felt the world snap into some kind of focus as her blood pounded in her ears.  
  
“YANG!” she screamed before bursting into petals with Crescent Rose unfurling totally. She charged the dragon and dragged her scythe across its scales as she spun around it from its neck to its torso, causing a long line of a bleeding wound to suddenly burst on the dragon. It roared in pain and backed away as Ruby dashed back, grabbing Yang and taking her back to the tower.  
  
“Yang?” Ruby begged her unconscious sister as she checked her over. Blake hopped over to them and Weiss was looking from the tower’s base. The guards tried firing arrows at the dragon while it was stunned, Irileth adding her lightning to the mix, but there were far less of them than before. Vilkas, Farkas, and Skjor were out on the field with some of the guards circling around the dangerous creature, hoping to get it occupied. Ruby blinked back tears and looked at the dragon in rage.  
  
“Weiss,” she called out to her partner. “Make a trail! Blake, hold its head back!”  
  
“What are you-”  
  
“Just do it!” she yelled, startling her teammates. She looked at the dragon, and recalled its name.  
  
“Mirmulnir!” she yelled at it, gaining its attention after it tried to knock Farkas away with a wing. “Hi ahraan dii brihnah!” she roared out. “Zu’u los do us krii hi!”  
  
The dragon growled as its tail whacked the ground in front of a charging Skjor, missing the Companion as he backed away. Then it laughed mirthlessly.  
  
“ **Brit grah! Come then, meyus joor!** ”  
  
Ruby held Crescent Rose in a ready pose and put herself into a sprinting position.  
  
“Now!”  
  
A trail of white glyphs appeared before her, leading straight to the dragon, as a black ribbon appeared following a bladed gun that fired. Blake grabbed the gun and pulled it and the other end of the ribbon, snatching it into the dragon’s mouth and tugging back. The dragon’s head was pulled back by the faunus, and then the men on the field rushed to her side to help.  
  
Ruby shot forward, firing her sniper-scythe as her Semblance activated and the glyphs pushed her speed even higher. She released a yell as she swung her scythe forward. The total momentum behind her swing was thus that she buried her scythe’s blade all the way into the chest of the dragon where she believed its heart to be. Mirmulnir roared in pain and whipped its head around as it struggled against the pain. Ruby yanked Crescent Rose loose and jumped clear as the dragon fell to the ground and wildly thrashed its limbs about. It looked at Ruby, and the girl could swear she saw fear in its eye as it struggled to escape, rapidly losing strength.  
  
 **“D- Dovahkiin?! NOOOOOOOO!!”** With one last pathetic thrash, the dragon went still. For a long moment no one moved, and then the remaining men and women began cheering.  
  
“Let’s make sure that overgrown lizard is really dead!” Irileth ordered as she approached.  
  
Farkas tested with a stab to the neck, which elicited no response. At this confirmation, the cheering doubled in strength, with many of the surviving guardsmen turning to look at Ruby in amazement, who herself was still checking over her sister in worry.  
  
“Amazing! You really killed it!” one guardsman cheered. Ruby ignored him as she went over to check on her unconscious sister.  
  
“Yang!” Ruby cried before hugging her, hoping that she’d be all right. Their other teammates came up to try and check on her as well.  
  
“Well done ev- What’s going on?!” Another guardsman shouted out in panic, directing everyone's attention  
  
Everyone looked back at the dragon corpse, which had begun to glow and seemingly light on fire. As the flames from within it burned away its flesh into ashes and embers, wisps of energy leapt from the burning dragon and into Ruby. The wind seemed to pick up around them all as the energy flowed into her. Ruby felt as if her soul was being pinched from all around, as though her Aura was being overfilled with power. When the lights died down, she felt as though she could recall seeing things she never saw before, and a deeper understanding of Words and how they differed from words filled her memories.  
  
“I don’t believe it,” a guardsman muttered as he took off his helmet. “You’re…Dragonborn.”  
  
Ruby looked around in fear and began patting her torso, feeling like there should have been more wounds there.  
  
“Am…” She blinked and teared up a bit. “Am I going to die?”  
 ****

* * *

**Thuri du hin sil ko Sovngarde!** \- My overlord will devour your souls in Sovngarde!  
  
 **Tiid! Clo! Ul!** \- Time! Sand! Eternity! - The Slow Time Shout  
  
 **Hi fen oblaan us Mirmulnir, neltiid joor!** \- You will die to Mirmulnir, fleet (fast) mortal!  
  
 **Hi ahraan dii brihnah! Zu’u los do us krii hi!** \- You hurt my sister! I am going to kill you!  
  
 **Brit grah!** \- Beautiful battle!  
  
 **Meyus joor** \- Foolish mortal


End file.
